


Things That Matter

by indysaur



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6023302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indysaur/pseuds/indysaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the things Finn is good at.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

FN-2187 is good at assessing situations. For a long time, it’s his hallmark, his secret weapon, his distinguishing characteristic.

When confronted with a new situation, Stormtroopers are taught to adapt, but always with the goal of the First Order in mind. You work independently for a common purpose.

_Blood is cheap — you are united by cause, all of you brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers to a new, greater, more just world. Blood is cheap — yours no more precious than the trooper next to you. Blood is cheap — nothing valuable is lost when it is spilled in service to peaceful order, there is only gain._

FN-2187 is fast to process, creating a mental list of priorities in descending order.

When he is six, and enters his first year of training, they are given masks to prepare them for a lifetime behind a helmet and his priorities become:

  * To find a second in which he can hide, and loosen the mask’s tie.


  * To learn a more permanent method of making room to see behind this mask, less limited by the shadows cast on his face.


  * To fight the urge to help FM-616 next to him, already breathing heavy, and whom FN-2187 has seen, at night, carefully poking her feet out from underneath the blanket. “I feel like I’m suffocating, otherwise,” she had whispered.



When he is caught picking at the tie at the back of his head, his training officer places a hand on his shoulder, looks deeply into his eyes, and smiles — the last action so unexpected that Finn returns it, lips curving up instinctively behind his mask. She has a surprisingly pleasant smile, one that goes a long way toward softening the impact of her horns, the tattoos that cut her face into distinct planes.

Her smile grows, as if she can somehow see his response, and she intones smoothly, calmly, “You will not worry your mask. You will find freedom in anonymity.”

And before he realizes, he responds, “I will not worry my mask. I will find freedom—” he stutters, licking dry lips, “—in anonymity.”

Later, when he’s in bed, listening to the quiet sounds of his fellow trainees settling into sleep, he remembers the strangeness of that moment, how quickly he had dropped his hands, how soft his mind had felt, melting under a full-blooded sun. He adjusts his list.

 

****

 

Two sleep cycles pass, and FN-2187 has been watching, and as they file out to mess, when their class is transitioning between the command of two officers, he slips behind 616, whispers, “Puff out your cheeks.”

She looks over her shoulder at him, then corrects, eyes forward, leaving an ear inclined toward him.

“When they’re tying the mask, puff out your cheeks, but make sure—” he stops abruptly when the captain turns toward them, and what he’d wanted to say was ‘ _Make sure to time it correctly_.’

He kicks himself, hard, the next day, when 616 inhales too early, deep and silent, her cheeks rounding before their training officer has circled behind her to close the tie, drawing attention to her act. Their TO’s eyes glint, and 616 is led out, and FN-2187, he waits.

He waits through three sleep cycles for them to come for him, too; there’s no reason for 616 not to talk, to try to ease her consequences by exposing him. It would be the strategic thing to do.

He waits another seven before he stops watching for 616’s return. Her decommissioning is supposed to be a warning against even small acts of rebellion, but it’s too late, the damage is done. 2187, he knows something now.

He doesn’t stop thinking about her. Even years later, looking back, he likes to think he saw her shoulders square as she walked away. He likes to think she found room—limitless room—to breathe.

 

****

 

For a long time, his list narrows down to two things:

  * Survive.


  * To survive, flourish.



He is a model trainee. He leads his corps through simulation after simulation, breaking records. General Hux arrives to observe one day, and when the FN Corps is summoned for an audience, Phasma is standing tall, poised in a way that 2187 knows means something like pride.

“You beat the previous speed record for this simulation,” she states.

“We _set_  the previous speed record, too,” Slip says, smirking, knocking into 2187’s shoulder, making him stumble forward.

Speaking out of turn is a mistake, but Phasma just turns to the general, letting it pass this time.

2187 will offer Slip a correction, later. The idiot probably won’t take it and 2187 wonders, not for the first time, why he keeps taking the risk when the possibility of a positive impact is so slim. The smart thing to do would be to keep his mouth shut, his hand unextended. Slip is just… so obvious about his failings, you know? It makes 2187’s palms itch.

Hux has his hands clasped behind him, his shoulders pulled back, accentuating his thin frame. He steps toward 2187, looks down at a datapad in hand, a show of assessment before he says, quietly, “Captain Phasma speaks very highly of you and your corps.”

It’s not a compliment, exactly, but 2187 feels obligated, says, “Thank you, sir,” then nods toward Phasma. “Captain.”

“And all these records. They’re certainly impressive.” Hux pauses. “Did you also know you hold the record for lowest kill count in this simulation?”

2187 opens his mouth, pauses. He licks his lips, stalling to search around the edges of what suddenly feels like a trap. “I did not, sir.”

“Well,” Hux says. He turns away, his face unreadable. “Congratulations on another noteworthy milestone.”

It’s the first time he learns this lesson, but not the last: there is no hiding from the First Order.

 

****

 

Things happen faster, after that.

Phasma deploys them on their first mission on some backwards-ass mining colony, and FN-2187 almost misses base, the familiarity of chrome, and spotlessness, and order.

Phasma herds his corps into a small room, commands them to kill the unarmed leaders of a small scale rebellion, and 2187, who had thought he’d known what to do to flourish—to remain invisible, protected, _> seeing_>—realizes quickly that he had miscalculated his capability to an extreme.

Slip, whom 2187 has, in Phasma’s words, coddled for years, has no trouble aiming at a restrained, unarmed target. It’s a year-one skill, after all, and here they are, on the verge of being full-fledged Stormtroopers. 2187 can’t see Slip’s face when the other trooper pulls the trigger. He imagines that it’s blank and obedient. Maybe eager, even. He bites his tongue.

2187 watches his corps do what they were trained to do, and wonders if it’s possible to step down the ladder he’d scaled so far, how quietly he could execute a fall from grace.

His list drops down to one, narrow focus.

 

****

 

The thing is, you can’t wait for shit. Here’s what FN-2187 promises himself: that if he ever sees a window of opportunity, even a glimmer of light, he will hurtle through. All he wants from the universe is one chance, no matter how fleeting. Just one.

 

****

 

Slip gives up sanitation duties without a fight. It’s not pleasant work — lugging bodies to the trash compactor, mopping blood from interrogation rooms — but it’s work that a trooper is supposed to be hardened to, and Phasma’s voice sounds almost approving when 2187 makes the formal request for an exchange.

“Developing a stomach,” she says, and slaps down her stamp.

 

****

 

Here is how his window opens.

FN-2187 is huddling over his blaster rifle, back aboard the Finalizer after a disastrous mission on Jakku, discarding possibility after possibility that might save his ass and paper over the suspicion in Phasma’s voice when she ordered a weapons inspection.

His current list is full of impossibilities, reading:

  * Turn in a blaster that has been discharged.


  * To do this, fire a blaster aboard the Finalizer, preferably in an abandoned simulation room.


  * To do this:
    * Override the automated safety on his registered blaster that clicks into place when un-engaged and aboard the Finalizer.
    * Failing that, steal a discharged blaster unattended by one of his corps members, and hope against hope that he gets the laziest fucking arms inspector in the Order, someone who won’t bother to check the blaster’s registration because they’ve got about as much imagination as a sarlacc spore.


  * Failing all of the above, hope to frame his actions as those of a Stormtrooper overwhelmed by blood and panic and weakness, rather than those of a soldier who had realized, choking back terror, that the words ringing through his head were: _I will not obey_.



His mind is racing as he heads back toward the simulation rooms, passing the interrogation cells, only to recognize an approaching Stormtrooper by his gait, the military strut of Zeroes.

A scream tears through the hallway, echoing from behind a door, and Zeroes jerks his head toward it, says, “You looking forward to mopping the pilot up?”

 _The pilot._ “I’m surprised he’s still alive,” FN-2187 says, more truth in his statement than he’d intended. He laughs, hoping its edge is sharp and glinting.

Zeroes pauses, then lowers his blaster from its ready position, which makes FN-2187 blink, breaking him away from the storm swirling in his head.

It’s a shockingly vulnerable thing to do, to break protocol in front of someone who could report you, an indication of trust that no one has bothered to offer FN-2187 in a long time. “Nines and I have a few minutes of downtime soon,” Zeroes says. “We were going to talk about what a shitty Trooper Slip was.”

FN-2187 thinks there’s a question here. Zeroes is waiting as if he’s expecting an answer. “Okay,” he says.

Zeroes’ shoulders straighten, he touches his heels together, stepping into stance, lifting his blaster. “You can come, asshole,” he says. He steps around 2187 then, done, and strides away.

2187 turns to watch him go. It’s another bizarre event in what’s been an incomprehensible day. He huffs inside his helmet, blinking hard, cursing, for the thousandth time, the helmet’s limited field of vision, the blinders darkening his world into one narrow panel. He clenches his hands into fists, studying the possibilities. It’s hard to see clearly, but there could be a way to fix this, maybe. There might still be a place for him in the First Order, if he just _tries harder_.

Then Zeroes’ voice again, a shout down the hallway: “But only if you fucking clean your helmet first.”

Spoken like the streak of dried blood is just a stain, something that can be washed away easy and without cost.

 _Let’s go, 87_ , he thinks. He picks a path.

 

****

 

There's a moment, right after the anchor connecting Finn and Poe to the Finalizer snaps, where all Finn can see is stars, his mind blown into silence by infinite systems, billions of worlds and different lives.

Poe Dameron is a flood of streaming and sudden light. "Incoming!" he shouts.


	2. Chapter 2

Finn is good at moving forward. He swims up out of unconsciousness, slow, then with a rush to the surface. When his eyes break open, he nearly flinches at the brightness of the light, his pupils dilating as they adjust for an unexpected quantity.

The first thing he sees is a close-up of Poe’s face, which is unsettlingly near. Poe hasn’t noticed that Finn is awake yet, and, honestly, Finn isn’t entirely sure he _is_ awake. As his senses sputter back to life one by one, he runs down a list of what he knows:

  * He’s pretty sure that he’s alive. 95% certain.


  * He is 98% certain that Rey is alive, a belief fed mostly by a clouded memory of being aboard the Millenium Falcon, Rey’s strong hands pulling the remains of his leather jacket off of his back, laying strips of bacta bandages across his split flesh, a heavy and sickening scent in the air, whispering, “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”


  * He is 100% certain that Poe's in need of a nap, the evidence clear in the dark circles under Poe’s eyes, the heavy stubble on Poe’s face.



Finn’s sense of touch kicks in last, and as it sputters into gear, Finn feels a coolness spread across the lower half of his face, a steady, careful scrape against his throat. Finn swallows hard, a gulp of fear in his stomach at the touch of a sharp edge, until his brain catches up, and Finn realizes it must be a razor. Poe is… is Poe giving him a shave? It’s a logical conclusion, but Finn can’t make sense of it, can’t quite comprehend that patient attention aimed at something so small. Finn wants to speak, but Poe has a blade to Finn’s throat, and startling him might not be the best idea. Finn figures that Poe will notice, eventually, that his eyes are open, but seconds pass — just a few at first and then a steady stream — until it becomes increasingly clear that Poe Dameron is intensely focused on the task at hand to the exclusion of most everything else.

Poe draws the razor across Finn’s jaw in long, careful strokes, gently gripping Finn’s chin to turn his face first this way, then the other, as he neatly cleans up Finn’s sideburns.

Finally, he steps back, flips the razor closed and turns to grab a towel, and Finn licks his lips, croaks out, “You’re not going to make sure they’re even?”

Finn sees Poe flinch, a sudden twitch in his back, but when Poe turns, it’s a controlled action, and his smile is as easy and unruffled as his eyes are tired. He wipes his hands with the towel, his grin growing as he meets Finn’s eyes, raises an eyebrow. “You know, Doctor Kalonia was worried you might wake up fragile. And now when all my guards are lowered, _criticism_?”

Finn chokes a little on a laugh, and Poe grabs a cup of water, holds it to Finn’s mouth. Finn brings his hand up to touch at the base of the cup, tipping it up until every drop is gone. He sighs, licks his dry lips. He cuts a glance up at Poe, catching a flash of quickly hidden relief in the pilot’s eyes. “This was a strange way to wake up. Very disorienting. I’m disoriented.”

Poe shrugs, running a hand through his hair. “You should be thanking me, buddy. The medi-droids weren’t going to clean up your facial hair, and between you and me, it was growing in patchy.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Poe laughs, drags a chair a little closer to Finn’s side, sits down heavily. “If you’re vain like me? Definitely.” Poe kicks up his feet onto the edge of Finn’s bed, shuffles a little lower in the chair, getting more comfortable, an ease welling up in his expression, a rising tide that carries with it the exhaustion that Finn had noticed Poe holding at bay.

“Thanks, Poe,” Finn says. He wants to make sure he says it.

Poe closes his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re welcome, Finn.” He yawns. “Anyway, it’s just a little bit of help,” he says, like it’s an intention normal and weightless, so easy to express you can just spit it out before falling asleep.

 

****

 

Finn is a good patient. He’s used to orders, and regimented schedules, and gritting his teeth through pain. Doctor Kalonia ends up shortening his stay in the medbay by four days, and when she tells Finn that he’ll be transferred to a set of living quarters sooner rather than later, Finn grabs her hand without thinking, enthusiastic and grateful.

She looks surprised, and Finn feels himself flush, tries to correct and drop her hand, but her face softens, and she closes both her hands over his, holding it for a little while.

“I am always amazed,” she says, quietly, “by our capacity to heal.”

 

****

 

The truth is that it _would_ have been the smarter thing to do to leave his armor on, back on Jakku. Stormtrooper armor is built to regulate temperature, designed to keep a soldier optimally efficient no matter the planet’s climate. But he had crashed through the atmosphere, returned to this fucking backwater of a planet, and known three things:

  * He was alone, and the knowledge filled him with equal parts fear (he had been part of a corps for as long as he could remember, he could count the number of times he’d been alone on one hand, and he knew — they’d taught him — that your odds of survival were better when you have numbers on your side) and elation (he was _free_ ).


  * The armor in prime condition would be one thing, but its systems had been damaged, their effectiveness slowly dwindling until the benefits were outweighed by the fact that it hampered his movement.


  * He had a name, now, and he could see the world a little more clearly for what it was, and there was no reason to look through filtered glass and “enhanced” vision, no reason to put the helmet back on, no one to enforce the prison sentence his face had been given,  to keep him from feeling the sun on his cheeks, from staring at a horizon that stretched on and on.



Finn’s not exactly sure how they got on this topic, but he finds himself spilling his guts more often than not when Poe comes to keep him company while he muscles through physical therapy. Talking helps keep the pain at bay, and as Finn pushes and pulls at muscles stitching back together, re-introducing them to habitual actions, teaching himself again how to stretch, he bites back gasps, keeping up a steady stream of words.

So here they are, Poe listening as Finn talks, absorbing Finn’s words quietly. Poe puts a hand on Finn’s shoulder, squeezing gently, his thumb making slow sweeps.

Finn feels embarrassed, suddenly. “I mean… I would have felt really stupid if I ended up dying of heat stroke for the sake of a gesture.”

Poe smiles. His hand is warm and heavy on Finn’s shoulder. He looks down, face hidden, says, “You know, I’ve been begging to hear stories about the Rebel Alliance since I was knee-high. My parents fought alongside so many of the Resistance’s old guard, and a few decades later, here I am, picking up where they left off in a war that’s… right—I know it’s right—and exhilarating, and,” he lets out a whoosh of breath, “starting to feel _eternal_.”

Poe’s hand slides off Finn’s shoulder, and Finn leans forward, patient.

“You can only fly so many supposedly game-changing missions before you start to wonder…” Poe laughs, shakes his head, straightening and meeting Finn’s eyes again. “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t know where I’m going with all this, buddy. I guess I’m just saying that I think I get it.” He grins, beautiful. “Sometimes doing something for the gesture of it is the only thing that keeps you from sinking to your knees.”

 

****

 

The thing is, Poe is busy, and he’s got a half-dozen cares piled on his shoulders at any given time, and he feels obligated to Finn. Not in an unkind way, but Finn can see that Poe feels like he owes Finn something.

Finn thinks it would make Poe uncomfortable if he pointed it out, though. He keeps his mouth shut but the knowledge close, something he fiddles with when things are quiet. There’s something about the shape of it that’s unfamiliar.

 

****

 

The rhythm of the base is easy to adjust to, which makes sense, really. A military force is a military force, and even though there are, of course, incredibly significant differences between the Resistance and the First Order, the bones are the same.

Finn doesn’t have a commanding officer here, which makes things a little more confusing, sure, but he does have a set of orders from medical, a routine to follow to keep his body healing. He spends his first few days on his feet shuttled from post to post: occupied fully by his physical therapy, the occasional chat with Poe, and debriefing sessions with General Organa.

The last are more tiring than Finn had anticipated; the general has been as kind as she could afford to be but the intelligence unloads have been exhaustive. Honestly, he’s glad that they’re coming to an end.

“Thank you for your effort, Finn,” the general says. “I can’t imagine these sessions have been pleasant for you.”

Finn wants to shrug. “They’re not unpleasant, General. If I know anything that could help Poe, or Rey, or you, I want to share that.”

“And what will you do with your time now?”

“Ma’am?”

“Doctor Kalonia has said that you’re recovering quickly. She said she could recommend you for active duty sooner rather than later.” General Organa cocks her head. “I had to remind her that you’re not yet one of my soldiers.”

Finn nods. “No, ma’am, I guess I’m not.”

General Organa studies him, her gaze careful. “Would you like to be? We could train you. I’m sure you would learn quickly.”

“To be a soldier?” Finn does shrug then, wincing internally at letting the movement slip.

General Organa sees him forming an apology for his casual response, waves it off before it takes shape. “You can speak frankly with me, Finn.” She smiles ruefully. “I’ve always tended to be impatient with formalities, and I haven't actually gotten any better at hiding it with age.”

Finn assesses the depth of her sincerity, before nodding, breathing out. He flexes his fingers, letting himself lean forward, break out of posture. “It’s just that, with all due respect, ma’am, I know how to be a soldier. It’s the _main_ thing I know how to do.”

General Organa nods. “Then it would be an even shorter time before you’d become a great asset to the Resistance.” She waits, bringing her hands together.

Something prickles at the back of Finn’s neck, General Organa’s words resting heavy. He nods, trying to find a reason to be still.

The general sighs, taking in his uncertainty. “ _I’m_ going to speak honestly, now, Finn. I hope it won’t—” She clenches her jaw, looking away. “If I were less tired, I could do this more gracefully, I think,” she says, half to herself, and Finn remembers what he'd been taught in the First Order about Leia Organa, orphan warmonger, and her mercenary husband.

Finn reaches forward, wanting to touch her hand. “I’m sorry. I should have said earlier. How sorry I am about—”

“It’s fine.” The general cuts him off. “Han is—was—a good man, but I’m more than used to dealing with him leaving me.” Finn thinks it was meant to sound more glib than it did; even the general looking surprised at the strength of the bitterness on her tongue.

Instinctively, Finn closes the distance between their hands, sliding his under hers, and her surprise flares before breaking, a sudden split that puts enough grief on display to make Finn’s chest ache.

They sit in silence for a beat, and then the general gives his hand a pat, pulls away. “Thank you,” she says. She collects herself, filling again with resolve, her shoulders strong and unbroken. “Finn, I would like you to stay. I’ve seen your knowledge of the First Order already proven invaluable. According to Poe, and Chewbacca, and Rey, you are a truly capable soldier. Your loyalty, your bravery, and your strength would be well-valued here.” She presses on. “I think that we could provide you with a purpose, Finn. I think you could make for yourself a real legacy, and do great, heroic things. I know you would save lives, more than the lives you have already saved, including those of Poe and Rey.”

Finn sits back in his chair, huffing out a flustered laugh. “You’re making it hard to say no.”

General Organa smiles. “Good.” She stands, then, and the protocol droid who had been recording this debriefing session falls in at her side. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t do everything I could to keep good people in the Resistance. I meant every word of what I said.” She puts a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “Still, I hope you know that it remains your choice. And if you chose to leave, the Resistance wouldn’t hold it against you.”

Finn swallows, his hands clasping together in front of him. “When would I have to make a decision by, ma’am?”

“Take the time you need. I won’t rush you. But Finn?” She waits for him to meet her eyes again. “Be sure to make a decision. It’s too easy to be swept up in crisis, and let yourself believe that you don’t have the luxury of choice.” She looks far away for a moment. “You’ve earned that, at least.”

 

****

 

Finn finds Poe in the hangar, sitting in his X-wing. Technically, Poe does have a small office on base, but Finn’s noticed that, more often than not, people know to look for Poe in the seat of his starfighter, his preferred station for looking over mission plans and flight formations. “Hey,” Finn calls up to Poe. “Do I have to get someone's permission to go off-base?”

Poe straightens up, looks down at Finn. “Where do you want to go, bud?”

Finn isn’t sure why it’s difficult, suddenly, to meet Poe’s eyes, a kind of tension vibrating through him. “I could just use a change of scenery, you know?” He tries to smile.

Poe slides his datapad into his back pocket, eyeing Finn carefully, then says, “I get that.” He jumps down from his starfighter, then throws an arm around Finn’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

 

****

 

The forest makes Finn feel small, all shifting blue shadows and looming trees of foreign species. There’s been a break in the rain, thankfully, the air brisk. “Do you know where you’re going?” he asks Poe’s back.

“Vaguely,” Poe replies. “But more importantly, I know how to get back to base.”

Poe flashes a smile over his shoulder, and Finn returns it easily, feeling some of the strain that had lingered since his talk with the general fade. It’s nice, in a way, to feel like he’s nobody to these trees. Just another being breathing the same air.

“You want to tell me what spooked you?” Poe’s styled his voice casually.

“I’m not spooked, exactly.” Finn licks his lips, trying to parse his own thoughts, figure out what he’s feeling. “I think I just assumed that I’d be Resistance. At least until Rey came back.”

“Something change? Can’t imagine the general tried to kick you out.”

“No, it’s nothing like that. General Organa has been—” He presses his tongue to the back of his teeth, searching. “It’s hard to find the right words.”

“That’s a good thing, right?” Poe slows down, falling into step beside Finn.

“Yeah, of course. It’s good. There are a lot more ways to be strong than I knew.” Finn breathes deep, taking in the smell of wet earth, damp green. There's something like moss, a deep red that winds around the trees and climbs up trunks, looking for all the world like veins, flush and vital.

“Well something’s got you spinning, buddy.” Poe walks close, his shoulder bumping against Finn’s. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but you can.”

“I haven’t really had a second to take in the landscape, is all. Between our semi-successful escape and taking on Kylo Ren, there’s been a lot to react to.” Finn grins, trying to joke, shake whatever’s on his tail. “It’s a good thing I’m great at reacting.” He raises an eyebrow at Poe, walks tall, adopting a strut. “I mean, look, I’m not going to say hero, but some people do. You ever use a lightsaber before? I’ve done it _twice_.”

Poe whistles. “Where do you want us to erect the statue?” he asks. “Also, I take exception to ‘semi-successful escape’. We’re both here aren’t we?”

“After a crash landing, separation, and another handful of near-death situations,” Finn points out.

“You’re so caught up in the details!”

Finn laughs.

They walk in comfortable silence for a bit, and then Poe cuts a glance over at Finn. “So the general didn’t ask you to leave. But she did say something that made you wonder if you’re welcome?”

Finn shrugs, lets his arms swing back and forth, loosening the knots in his shoulders, the tightness in his back. “No, she made me feel welcome. She made a pretty compelling case for why I should stay, actually. It just made me realize that staying a soldier was an option, not just this destiny.”

“Is there somewhere else you’d want to go? Something else you’d want to be?” Poe’s tone is light, but he seems… on his toes. Ready to act.

Finn laughs again. “That’s the thing, you know? I don’t know. What else is even possible? This is all I know how to do.” He sighs, tilting his head back, searching for where the trees might end, where their canopies burst past low-hanging clouds.

 

****

 

They get caught in the rain and it’s miserable, true, but Poe looks so damn upset that Finn can’t stop snickering.

“If you think that you’re successfully hiding the fact that you’re laughing at me, you’re wrong,” Poe bites out. He’d tried to build a shelter when the rain had first started, muttering to himself, “This is why you should review basic training every once in a while, Dameron, what the _fuck_ ,” but the rain had gotten heavier, and the shelter had collapsed for the most part, leaving Poe soaked through and huddling under a couple branches and a wide strip of bark that had, out of sheer luck, managed to hang together.

Finn, meanwhile, is relatively dry, the outerwear he’d thought to bring in his pack stretched over a recess formed by twin saplings. Finn tries to school his face into something resembling seriousness. “Poe, just come over here. There’s enough room for both of us.”

Poe’s jaw clenches. “You could have told me you were building a weather shelter, too.”

Finn nods. “I could have. But you seemed dead set. And honestly…” he fights back a smile. “I thought you knew what you were doing.”

“This isn't a regular part of my training,” Poe protests. “Pilots aren’t meant to be caught on the ground.”

“But, I mean. You crash.”

Poe throws his hands up, rolling his eyes. “Yes, okay, you and I crashed that one time. And sure, pilots get some basic survival training for the off chance you end up planet-bound. But most of our time, believe it or not, is focused on learning _not_ to get shot down.”

Finn hears Poe’s voice sharpening and slips back into old habit, cataloging and assessing, before he catches himself, just asks, “Are you actually upset?” He sobers his voice. “I’m sorry if you are and I haven’t been taking you seriously.”

“What? No. No, you’re fine, Finn.” Poe sighs, rustles up a smile. “And dry, which is more than I can say for myself. Clearly, I’m underestimating the wrong person. I should have checked the forecast before we left base. We’ve only been passing through this storm system every other day.”

There’s a clap of thunder, and Finn swears he can hear a tear in the clouds as the rain doubles down. “Poe, get your ass over here.” He’s slipped into the voice he’d use when leading his corps through a simulation. “Time to abandon your pride. You can pick it up again later.”

Poe makes a gesture with his hands, something Finn assumes is rude, but he jogs over, wedges himself in besides Finn without a word.

Finn thinks Poe might be pouting, maybe. It’s a strange look on him. “Your, uh — your hair still looks okay,” he tries.

“Oh, god,” Poe groans, dropping his face into his hands. “This is so humiliating, buddy,” but he’s laughing again, which is good to hear.

“Which part?” Finn asks. “The hair, or your sulk?”

Poe pushes his hands through his hair, then drops them onto his knees. “You know, it was easier to imagine you were sweet when you were in your coma.”

Finn laughs. “I spent most of our first encounter yelling at you about your incomprehensible desire to return to Jakku.”

“Believe me, that’s all screaming back to me,” Poe says, grinning.

They sit in silence for a little while, and Finn feels Poe warm up next to him, their combined body heat doing its job. The forest is muted, the patter of rain against the makeshift roof of their shelter rhythmic. Finn’s hands are cold, and his socks are damp inside his boots, but still it’s nice, to have Poe there to lean against, to hear him breathing. “I’ve never done this before,” Finn says.

“Hm?” Poe says like he’s rousing himself from a doze. He shifts, getting more comfortable, his weight pushing a little more against Finn. “Which part? We’re not really doing anything.”

Finn looks out at all that verdant green, everything around them being watered, prepared for the season. “All of the parts. I don’t know. That part.”

Poe goes still next to him. “Oh,” he says.

 

****

 

Finn has dreams, mostly about people. Slip is there a lot. Sometimes the rest of his corps, Nines and Zeroes. Phasma, too, cold and tall and sneering. “It’s ridiculous that you feel guilt over me,” she says. “I find it belittling.”

“Yes, Captain,” he says, falling into habit. He’s back on Starkiller Base, amidst all that polish that he used to take at least a little bit of pride in.

“And what’s the point of feeling guilty now? Where was all this empathy and heartsickness when you were so cravenly reveling in your power over me on Starkiller Base?”

“Damn,” Slip says, leaning in close to whisper. “She seems mad. What’d you say? How'd you cravenly revel?”

Finn wants to shove Slip away, but he would have to step out of attention for that, and he’s not taking anymore risks for the guy, he’s promised himself.

“Come on, 2187, how bad could it have been?” Slip asks.

Finn can feel Phasma’s glare through her polished helmet. “The true indignity is that you didn’t bother to shoot me yourself and make sure I couldn’t come after you.” She sniffs. “Another indication that I failed in my duties as your training officer.”

It’s meant to be an insult, Finn knows. He’s heard this kind of thing hundreds of times, the implication that he is failing, that his behavior is an aberration, that he is _disappointing_ : arrows that had always hit their target before, leaving splinters in the softness beneath his ribs.

“Oof, that’s gotta sting,” Slip mutters.

Finn remains at attention. He frowns inside his helmet. “Less than you’d think,” he says, finally.

 

****

 

Finn has been limiting his movements to his quarters, the mess hall, and the training center where he keeps up with his physical therapy. He figures he’s already been explicitly allowed into those places, and feels secure in knowing he won’t seem out of place.

He’s pretty surprised when Dr. Kalonia calls him out on it. “What do you mean, ma’am?” he asks as he pulls off his shirt, exposing his back.

“Cut the shit.” He freezes and she rolls her eyes. “Commander Dameron has advised that you may not require the kid glove treatment anymore.”

Finn narrows his eyes suspiciously. “What did he say exactly?”

“You want me to quote him verbatim?” She sighs, exasperated, pressing at Finn’s back more firmly than he’s gotten used to. “I do have a pretty good impression of General Organa, but the commander’s well-practiced dazzle is harder to capture. His hair does so much of the work.”

Finn barks out a laugh. “I wasn’t actually expecting a reenactment.”

She presses at a specific point, at the base of his neck. “How much pain?” she asks.

“Six,” he replies.

She nods, inputting notes into her datapad, then picking up, “In the commander’s professional opinion, you are milking your specific tragedies. He admits they are hard to ignore, but believes that coddling you is a disservice to your strengths.”

“What? How are you coddling me?” Finn demands, insulted.

“In a million ways.” Her voice is matter-of-fact. “Finn, is there a reason you’re tethered to your room? I’ve heard from a reliable source that you only leave for physical therapy and food most days.”

"Who's your source? BB-8?" Finn clenches the side of the examination table tight as Dr. Kalonia continues to probe at his back, then admits, “I haven’t decided to join up, yet, officially, with the Resistance.”

“And?”

Finn breathes deliberately through his nose, clenches his jaw. “Do you — did they tell you I used to be a Stormtrooper?”

He waits for her hands to pause in their ministrations, but she continues, no break in her flow. “The official word being disseminated to the Republic and the base at large is that you were a highly classified Resistance agent, assigned to infiltrate the First Order. You blew your cover to rescue Commander Dameron and bring the Resistance vital intelligence about Starkiller Base.”

Finn has to smile at that. “Wow. People buy that?”

She does pause then, before saying, “Why not? It makes many of us feel better thinking we could pull off an operation like that.”

“That’s not who I am,” he says, shaking his head. “They’re lying.”

“And doing it very convincingly, so don’t ruin their work.” Finn has heard enough orders to recognize one. “They’ve thrown their weight behind you, for good or for ill. You don’t need to scurry in and out of your quarters like you're expecting a well-aimed boot.”

Finn lets that sink in. He’s not sure how to digest it. “I don’t mean to question high command,” he says carefully, “but is it really the best course of action to deceive the base about my background?” He smiles ruefully. “Someone once told me, more or less, that secrets have a way of getting out. And most people tend to get upset when they find out they’ve been lied to.”

“Hold on,” Dr. Kalonia says. “This might be a little cold.” A light mist sprays over his back, settles on his skin, a cool relief from the ever-present, still smoldering pain.

She’s still silent, and Finn wonders if she’s going to pretend she hadn’t heard his last question.

She sighs, finally, and says, “I see your point, and will pass it along, though, honestly, I’d be surprised if that wasn't a point of consideration when they made the original decision. I don’t know the details of how they chose their course of action. I’m a glorified medic who was briefed because you’re my patient and I know how to keep my opinions to myself.” She pats his back gently. “You can put your shirt back on, by the way.”

He shrugs it on, turns toward her now. There’s a new furrow in her brow, a line deepening, and Finn feels, suddenly, ungrateful. “I appreciate the thought, Dr. Kalonia. Honestly, it is a relief to know that, you know — my history’s my own and not just public knowledge.” He grins. “I promise not to scuttle anymore.”

“Well, that's good, at least.” She smiles, but that line between her eyes lingers. “Finn, don’t sequester yourself, but remember not to be careless either. You’re healing nicely, but you’re not out of the woods yet. Do you understand?”

He nods, then asks, “So, how do you — I don’t know the protocol. Can I just wander around now? Open any door, ransack supplies, pester officers?”

“I would direct those questions to Commander Dameron. He seems to have a vested interest.” Her last words are pointed.

Finn laughs. “I’ve never heard someone sound so annoyed by Poe.”

“You haven’t been here very long,” Dr. Kalonia sniffs. “For someone with absolutely no medical training and little understanding of your treatment, he has been _very opinionated_.”

 

****

 

Poe’s been out of orbit for the last couple days, some mission that Finn keeps being told isn't dangerous, but  _is_  highly classified. It’s a new kind of frustrating, being fed just enough information to know for a fact that there’s more to know.

Finn is about to head out to the training center when there’s an alert at his door. He opens it to see Poe, freshly shaved and dressed in the uniform he wears to debrief commanding officers. “My pilots tell me that you’ve been sticking your nose into my business,” he says, eyes warm.

Finn grins, pulls Poe into an easy hug. He squeezes him for good measure, then pushes Poe back, jokingly patting him down. “You’re okay? Everything in one piece?”

Poe rolls his eyes, shoving Finn’s hands away. “I’m fine, I’m fine. No thanks to the heap of space junk we had to fly. I told Statura’s requisitions officer that the Republic’s newest transport ships are incredibly unreliable, but did he care once he found out they were being built on Naboo? Of course he didn’t.”

Finn raises an eyebrow. “Why would that matter?”

Poe shrugs, reaches for the pack Finn had slung over his shoulder. He grabs it, rifling through it, searching. “He’s Gungan. Engineering on Naboo would mean that he’d get to take a bunch of trips home to keep an eye on progress. And who doesn’t get homesick? I understand it but after this last ride, I can’t let it slide, buddy, shit.”

Finn grabs his bag back from Poe, snaps open a side pocket, hands over the ration bar he knew Poe was looking for. “I’m heading out to physical training.” He watches Poe tear into the bar, shaking his head. “You should head to mess.”

“No can do. I already stopped by there. They’re not serving anymore.” He finishes off the last bite. He’s trying pretty hard, Finn can tell, to look as if he isn’t still starving.

Finn sighs heavily, then holds up his last ration bar. “You can have this if you promise to stop bothering Doctor Kalonia about my treatment.”

“You really want me to stop?” Poe asks.

Finn nods.

Poe shrugs. “Okay. Can I ask why?”

Finn hands over the ration bar, pleased. “I’m pretty sure Dr. Kalonia is one ‘suggestion’ away from slipping a sedative into your caf.”

Poe takes it, unwraps it, then moves out of the doorway, motioning for Finn to exit, indicating that he’ll walk him to the training center. “I didn’t realize.” He smiles a little. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t actually trying to be a nuisance. This time,” he amends.

“You’re not a nuisance.” It’s nice, to have Poe around again. His absence had exposed, in stark relief, how few people Finn feels comfortable with here at the Resistance. “Just next time, you don’t have to go through Doctor Kalonia. You can tell me directly if you think I’m ‘milking my specific tragedies’.”

Poe winces. “Buddy…”

Finn smirks. “Didn’t think that would come back to haunt you, did you?”

Poe shakes his head. “Finn, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” Finn knocks his shoulder into Poe’s. “Besides, you weren’t wrong. I was trying to figure out why you wouldn’t just say it to me. I think you might have been trying to spare me?”

He looks over at Poe, and Poe concedes the point with a tilt of his head.

“So I get that, and I even appreciate your reasons. Not too many people have ever worried about hurting my feelings before.” Finn smiles. “But I don’t need it. I’ve got thick skin.” They stop at the entryway to the training center. “Took a lightsaber to split it, didn’t it?”

Poe laughs. “I hear you.”

Finn grins at him, then pushes his way into the center, heading for the mats. He pulls his outerwear off, stripping down to his undershirt, stepping right into his warm-up stretches. “So are we okay?”

Poe’s laugh is quieter this time. “I should be asking you that. Are we?”

Finn nods, firm. He feels the tug of skin at the nape of his neck, still feeling new after weeks of healing. “Yeah. I think we might even be friends.”

“Imagine that,” Poe says, and his voice is warm, and kind, and sure.

 

****

 

Finn is just starting to find his feet, so, naturally, things go to shit.

He’s in the mess hall, very showily drinking down leftover Wroshyr nut milk from a bowl, trying not to laugh as one of the pilots grimaces. “Humans will truly eat anything,” Dendra Coi says, xer tendrils blanching white.

Finn’s lowering the bowl, about to respond, when he feels a knock against his shins, looks down. “BB-8!” Finn says. “You’re back from the mission already? Is Poe—”

BB-8 interrupts, vocalizing animatedly, and Finn catches bits and pieces, mostly names. He looks to Dendra for help, and xe translates, “Poe wants you to return to your quarters. BB-8 will accompany you.” Xe looks troubled.

“Why?” Finn asks.

BB-8 speaks again, and Dendra says, “The droid hasn't been given clearance to say.” Then to BB-8, “If there’s anything else you need translated, you should communicate it now. I understand the need for discretion, if that is a comfort.”

BB-8 hesitates, rocking for a moment, then vocalizes again. Dendra says, xer voice lowering, “Poe’s suggested that you stow any medication you’ve been provided on your person. You may not be permitted to return to your quarters for a while.”

Finn clenches his jaw, tries to ignore the rush of adrenaline flooding through his system. “That’s not ominous at all,” he says.

Dendra sends a ripple through xer tendrils, shifts so that xer shade falls over Finn. “It’ll be okay, Finn. This season, too, will pass,” xe says. “But for now, you should go.”

 

****

 

Finn gets back to his quarters a handful of minutes before a protocol droid arrives, requesting his cooperation very politely, very firmly. It’s enough time for him to have already popped a couple of painkillers, changed into a fresh, looser-fitting shirt. When he asks if he can bring a back support, the droid very regretfully informs him that it would be better if he didn’t.

As they walk through the Resistance base, Finn runs down the list of what he knows:

  * No one else seems to be operating outside of their normal procedures. If there’s a threat to the base, it’s not imminent.


  * They are making an effort to manage Finn’s reaction, to show him that there is no need to panic. If he were being viewed as an active threat, they wouldn’t have sent a single protocol droid to move him.


  * Still, he isn’t being treated as a neutral asset, either. The only reason Finn can think of as to why he wouldn’t be allowed the back support is if there was concern about what he had on his person, if the presence of any object in his hands, no matter how innocuous, could set others on edge.


  * He’s pretty sure that Poe has his back. Sure enough to hope for it, at least.



The last breaks him out of his head, and he lets out a hard breath, turns to the droid, eager for a distraction. “So, where are you from?” he asks, picking the first question that springs to mind.

The droid tilts its head, then responds, “Apologies. I believe your question is intended to function as small talk, with the appropriate response typically being the system of one’s origin. We have very different methods of creation, but I was manufactured on the planet Affa. I believe that is a suitable answer to your question. And yourself, Finn?”

“Hey, we’re not so different.” Finn’s laugh is too sharp, only just controlled. “I was manufactured, too, in a way.”

Finn doesn’t attempt any more conversation; he’s not sure what will come out of his mouth. They reach a part of the base Finn has never been to before, and the droid leads him into a room, informs him that someone will be back for him shortly. It closes the door after leaving. He’s guessing that it doesn't open from the inside.

Finn takes a seat on the cot that runs along the length of the room, breathes steadily. It’s not so bad a cell, he thinks.

 

****

 

Finn’s not sure how long it takes Poe to show up, but when he does, he claps Finn on the shoulder, says, “Well, it’s official. You’re a trendsetter,” and Finn filters down through the most likely possibilities, discarding, discarding, discarding until he gets to:

“There’s another defector." He thinks he sounds almost calm.

 

****

 

The Resistance had been alerted to the defection by the remnants of the Republic. A Stormtrooper had arrived at the old Senate Building on Coruscant, waited to be approached, then had calmly disarmed and requested to be delivered as a prisoner of war to the Resistance. That was weeks ago and Poe had been serving as a liaison to the Republic Navy, negotiating the delivery.

“So why am I here now?” Finn asks. “It sounds like you’ve had this operation running for a while. What happened?”

Poe’s jaw clenches. “As soon as we landed here, she asked for you in full view of some Resistance fighters, which is fine, and some of the Republic delegates, which is less fine.”

“Why? I thought the Resistance was selling the story that I was a plant directed to infiltrate the First Order.”

“We are, but there are some surviving Republic politicians who have always been skeptical of the details. And with the defector demanding to see you and going on about the presence of another Trooper on base, they’re… agitated.”

“Fuck.” Finn sighs. “So what now? We come clean? Because I gotta tell you, part of me would be relieved.”

“Finn. No.” Poe sits next to Finn, both hands on his shoulders, locking their gazes. His eyes are dark, his focus like a tractor beam. “This is important. It would have been considered horrific if the First Order destroyed even one planet, but they destroyed six. It would have been war if they destroyed any system, but they destroyed the current capital of the New Republic. It would have been unforgivable if they assassinated one senator, but they vaporized nearly the entire Galactic Senate, including Chancellor Villecham. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Finn hears his blood pounding in his ears. He swallows hard. “They’re looking for revenge.”

“Not all of them. But enough of them.” Poe looks tired. “Buddy, the hounds are at the damn door.”

 

****

 

Poe brings Finn a datapad, but Finn can’t bring himself to do anything with it but check the time. He knows he’s supposed to take some more pain medication at 2100 hours, but they tend to knock him out cold, leave him just a little fuzzy. Undulled, the pain is bright and razor-edged, and it keeps him looking straight ahead, every sense blown open and sensitive.

Poe insists on staying with him, which is ridiculous. Finn keeps protesting, but Poe just ignores him, asks him if he wants to learn how to play Dejarik, which literally might be the _last_ thing he wants to do.

“Force, Poe,” Finn finally says. “You don’t have to stand guard. I’m not going anywhere, and even if I could, you really think I’m in any condition to take on a base full of fighters?”

Poe turns to him sharply, studies his face. “You’ve got a strange idea of who I’m trying to protect here,” he says, finally.

 

****

 

Finn wakes up to Poe shaking him firmly. “What time is it?” he asks.

“It’s late. Or early, depending,” Poe says. He tosses Finn a jacket, something with a hood. “Put this on, quick.”

“Is this a jailbreak?” Finn asks, still catching up, his thoughts hard to hold onto. “I’m too tired for a jailbreak.”

“It’s not,” Poe says. “Trust me.”

Poe leads him down the hall. Finn is more tired than he’d thought, leaning heavily against Poe, the ache in his back roaring, demanding energy and attention. He’s half dozing when Poe sits him down on a chair, hands him a glass of water and two painkillers, then following that up with some caf.

“Sorry, Finn,” Poe says quietly. “You can sleep later.”

Poe pats at Finn’s cheeks, and waits, Finn figures, for him to be able to keep his eyes open for more than ten seconds at a time. The pain in his back is already cooling, and Finn feels his focus returning, noticing, with strange attention, the thickness of Poe’s eyebrows, the steadiness of Poe’s hands.

“You ready?” Poe asks, and when Finn nods, he helps Finn stand, leads him into a room where General Organa waits.

Finn snaps to attention. “General,” he says.

“Please, Finn. It’s just us. Let’s not stand on ceremony.” She motions for him to take a seat, signals a protocol droid to bring more caf.

Poe takes the seat next to Finn, elbows on the table, leaning forward toward the general. “So,” he says brightly. “Should I throw out a suggestion, or are you going to lay out a master plan, General? How are we tackling this? I've got an idea that feels like the winning ticket, but I like to pretend to be a team player, too."

General Organa raises an eyebrow at Poe. “You are much too awake for the hour.”

Poe shrugs. “I may have stopped by requisitions for a time-shift pill.”

“Commander Dameron,” the general says mildly, “is that really something you should be admitting to me now?”

“With all due respect, I figured you had bigger fish to fry.”

Finn is trying hard to be patient, waiting to understand what’s happening, the implication of this late-night meeting, but he feels a fraying around his edges. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he says, cutting in. “I just — it’s clear that there’s trouble, but how worried should I be right now?”

General Organa sighs. “I’m sorry, Finn,” she says. “Of course. Poe has briefed you on the current mood of the remaining Republic toward anyone affiliated with the First Order?”

“Mobs, pitchforks?” Finn asks.

She nods. “The surviving members of the Galactic Senate are facing a trial of their own. The Republic worlds are furious that the Senate turned such a blind eye to the First Order’s activities, and many planets are questioning the purpose of remaining part of a Republic that so clearly failed its people. As you might be able to imagine, the Senate is—”

“—they’re humiliated,” Finn says. He feels the knot in his gut twist. “Shit.”

“May I say, ma’am,” Poe interjects. “You’re doing a great job of not telling them I-told-you-so.”

“A true test of willpower,” General Organa says dryly. “The defection of this Stormtrooper has given them the opportunity to show that the Republic is taking the First Order seriously, that the Republic remains strong. It has also, unfortunately, reminded them about you.”

“So what do we do?” Finn asks. “Poe says the truth is off the table?”

General Organa locks eyes with Poe, the two of them exchanging a look, before she says, “I think that if we had shared the truth of your background from the start, we may have had a chance of creating enough goodwill behind you to keep you well out of reach of the more bloodthirsty sectors, but—”

“We made a mistake,” Poe says, quietly. “We got scared and we fucked up.”

“We don’t know that,” General Organa says. “It would have been a risk, even from the start. At this point, with public sentiment toward the First Order what it is...” She spreads her hands. “The risk is greater.”

“So what do we do instead?” Finn asks. He doesn’t have enough information to make accurate decisions, to get a full picture. His view feels so limited.

“We get you off the planet,” Poe says. He leans in close to Finn, his hand on Finn’s shoulder. “We let the defector ask for you until she’s blue in the face. We tell the senators that you’re on another classified mission for the Resistance, and remind them of the blows you’ve already struck against the First Order. Eventually, they’re going to realize their attention is better focused elsewhere.”

Finn stares down at his hands, running through the scenario, testing it for weaknesses, places where a leak could spring. Most of it checks out, until he gets to: “What happens to the Stormtrooper?” He looks up, first at Poe, then at General Organa.

“It helps that she came to us by choice,” General Organa says. “But there’s convincing to be done: that she is not a threat to the Republic, that she has truly renounced the First Order, that she can provide intelligence of substance.” She pauses, careful. “Under ordinary circumstances, the Republic would abide by the Galactic Concordance, which prohibits execution of political prisoners and the use of torture, but with the First Order’s violation of that treaty, there are some senators who insist that the Republic no longer has any obligation to it.”

Finn fights to keep his fists from clenching. “That’s not right,” he says. “She came to the Republic herself _._ She’s a victim, too. She was never given the option to _choose_ the First Order. ”

“To some in the Republic, the fact that she may have carried out any of her orders is enough to damn her,” says General Organa. She says it very gently.

“I want to talk to her,” Finn says.

“—that’s not a good idea—” Poe says.

“—are you sure?” General Organa asks.

“Yes,” Finn says. “Yes, I’m sure.”

She studies his eyes, then nods, letting her gaze fall away. “Then you’ll talk to her.” She looks, suddenly, very tired.

 

****

 

Poe is silent on the walk back to Finn’s new quarters, fuming, ignoring the glances that Finn throws his way.

When they get back to Finn’s temporary quarters, Finn closes the door behind them, turns to the pilot. “Poe, come on,” he says, a throbbing starting up in his temple. “This could have been me. The only difference between me and this defector is that I got lucky. I ran into someone who trusted me.”

“Okay, I get that — I think I get that — but we don’t know enough to worry about her right now.”

Finn shakes his head. “You’re pulling me into clandestine meetings to warn me about the Republic’s state of mind. You’re talking about smuggling me off the planet just because there’s a _chance_ some senators might discover that I was actually a Stormtrooper like she was. You’re telling me that they’re going to handle this defector kindly?”

“No, I’m saying that we don’t _know_ what her story is.” Poe matches Finn’s intensity, his words coming faster and faster. “There’s not a single example of a Stormtrooper who’s turned until you, not even in the days of the Rebel Alliance. And then, all of a sudden, there are two? Isn’t it possible that she’s a plant? The First Order considers you a traitor. Why wouldn’t they send someone after you? You can’t just assume that she’s innocent, that she’s _trustworthy_.”

Finn doesn’t know why it feels like a blow, but it does. He sits, heavy, feeling every past hour of the day dragging him down. He drops his head into his hands, his fingers curled into his hair, catching at his scalp. “What makes me special?” he says, finally, the words dragged out of him. He laughs, ragged. “I’m just the first one you saw take their helmet off.”

 

****

 

He’d been having this recurring dream, born of a little bit of real-life regret. There had been one night aboard the Finalizer, a few days after their corps had been deployed to that mining colony, when he had woken up to the sound of someone moving. Slip had been thrashing in the bunk across from his, caught in a nightmare.

In this dream, he gets up, he sits on the side of Slip’s bed, he shoves at him. “Wake up,” he whispers. “You’re going to scream, and bring the captain down here, fool.”

Slip jerks awake, panting, eyes blinking rapidly, suspiciously wet.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Slip says. “Nothing.”

“You shouldn’t be having nightmares,” he says. “Go to the pharmwing in the morning. Request some sleeping aids.”

“I will,” Slip says, staring up at the ceiling.

“You can’t afford another mark on your record.”

Slip coughs out a choked laugh. “Sure, I can,” he says. “I killed someone, didn’t I? That’s gotta keep me safe for a while.” Slip meets his eyes, finally. “Why didn’t you, 2187?”

In this dream, he feels a flush of anger, simmering close to rage. “Why did you, Slip? Of all the times to live up to expectations, why then?”

Slip shakes his head. “You don’t get it,” he says. His eyes are fading flickers in the dark. “You’re blind. You’ve always been blind. No one has use for a tool that can’t perform its function.”

In this dream, the darkness becomes something heavier, gaining in weight, growing fat and corpulent, eating until he can see only the glint of Slip’s eyes, angry and sad, blinking, blinking, then gone.

 

****

 

Poe isn’t there when Finn wakes up, but he shows up not too long after, freshly showered, clean-shaven. He walks in the door as Finn is putting on his shoes, and Finn looks up, says, “That was our first real fight, I think. It’s a milestone.”

Poe laughs wearily. “Should we high-five?” he asks. He sits down next to Finn, shoulder to shoulder. “You know I’m on your side, right?”

“Yeah, Poe,” Finn says. “I know that.” And it’s true. It’s stunning, really, how deeply he knows that.

“It just pisses me off. The Republic spent years dragging their heels on the First Order, and now, when they’ve finally gotten their heads out of the sand, they still can’t seem to identify the right target.” Poe scrubs at his face, catches himself. “Okay. Shit. Can we chalk last night up to sleep deprivation and a moderately severe abuse of the pharmbay’s meds?”

“Sure,” Finn says easily, and it’s worth it, really, to see the relieved smile on Poe’s face.

 

****

 

The Stormtrooper is still in full armor. Finn looks at her through the transparisteel window, the posture that’s been drilled into her so familiar. “Has she been given food and water?” he asks.

“Of course,” one of the senators—Sosha Soruna—says. He thinks she represents Naboo.

“Why is she still geared up like that?” Poe asks.

“She must feel at home in it,” another senator says, barely concealing a sneer. “We leave her a fresh change of clothes with her meals every night, but in the morning, the buckethead is always dressed in that.”

“Buckethead?” General Organa says. “Have we already degenerated to epithets, Erudo?”

“No one’s given her permission to stand down,” Finn says. He’s surprised by how steady his voice sounds. “That’s why she hasn’t taken off the helmet.”

 

****

 

He speaks with the trooper for what feels like hours, though Poe tells him later it wasn’t very long. It’s strange how elastic time can feel, when you don’t have a chronometer on a helmet’s HUD, when your day isn’t regimented into measured seconds.

General Organa sits with him in the room, and it takes Finn a little while to drop the habit of deferring to the presence of a commanding officer, of checking in to make sure what he’s doing is acceptable. There are still habits that he has yet to break. That’s supposed to be normal, he’s told.

Anyway he learns some things.

One: The Stormtrooper is younger than he’d expected.

> She takes off her helmet stiffly, uneasy at the loss of it. He knows some of the troopers find a comfort in being hidden behind plastoid, free to let emotions wash over their face that they would otherwise have to control.
> 
> She does a good job, though; her dark eyes stoic, even when Finn stares a little too long at a patch of bare scalp above her ear. Her otherwise thick hair has been shaved precisely, and they both know the reason why.
> 
> “I was being prepared for reconditioning,” she says, calmly. She’s well trained, the explanation coming without prompting, responding to unspoken shifts in the timbre of the room. You get used to the expectation that good soldiers anticipate orders.
> 
> “You defected before that happened?” Finn asks, following up.
> 
> “Yes,” she says, and he knows that she can sense his unspoken question, but she doesn’t expand, her eyes flashing with something like a request, an unspoken plea that Finn can’t help responding to; he swallows his curiosity.
> 
> ...It’s just that if you’re that close to being reconditioned, if they’ve got you far enough that you’re being prepped, escaping is like dodging a bullet that’s already been aimed, marked, fired.

Two: she used to go by Cling.

> The name was given to her because she had been assigned a specialized role as personal guard to whichever high-ranking officers had need of her.
> 
> She’s sitting on a lot of valuable intelligence, clued in to a lot more than Finn had ever been given clearance for.
> 
> “That’s not surprising,” General Organa says, smoothly, when he points that out. “Given the relatively short timeframe of your infiltration mission, compared to the lifetime Cling spent with the Order.” She reinforces the lie they're building around him, an armor that requires constant, distracting attention.
> 
> “Right,” Finn says, wondering if everyone can hear, from their place behind the transparisteel, how the word sticks in his throat.

Three: Cling takes swipes.

> She’s a cornered predator, and no matter how much he imagines her telling herself, “This is okay. I chose this. This is the path I _chose_ ,” there’s so much programming to overcome. He gets that.

> When she connects, he lets her see that she’s drawn blood. He cries when she tells him that Zeroes is publicly executed after Takodana, the killing framed as a final purge of the toxic failures of the FN Corps.

> Everyone who knew him longest is dead, and the thought of Zeroes so completely alone as he faced execution dredges up all of Finn’s guilt and anger and grief. He brushes at the tears on his face, wondering if Zeroes got to die, at least, with a sun on his face.

> “They made you soft,” Cling says, but it’s not an accusation, not an insult.

Four: He learns that forgetting something doesn’t make it untrue; it just leaves you defenseless.

> General Organa had stepped into the conversation when Cling brings up Kylo Ren, which makes sense. He looms so large in the First Order, and there’s a distinct lack of facts around him. It’s a dangerous combination that lends itself toward myth-making.
> 
> General Organa delivers a careful series of questions, and at one point, Cling laughs, says, “It’s incredible, how in such a short time, the Republic has forgotten the true power of those who wield the Force. Even you.”
> 
> “You forget their limitations,” General Organa says. She shrugs. “It’s hard to be in awe of someone once you’ve heard them whine.”
> 
> “In hindsight, you must see that this is where your mission went wrong,” Cling says. “You still underestimate Snoke’s power, how much he’s taught Kylo Ren.”
> 
> “Which mission—” Finn begins, distracted.
> 
> “Finn—” General Organa says, a warning, but it’s too late, Cling has already locked in, straightening again to her full height, a shutter in her eyes.
> 
> “The fact that you truly believed you could sneak a Resistance spy onto the Finalizer without Kylo sensing it was sheer arrogance,” Cling says. There’s a sneer on her face now. “That you expected someone like _him_ ,” her chin jutting towards Finn, “to be able to resist the Force is laughable. His mind was so easily re-molded, his loyalties rechanneled and waiting to be called upon when Snoke was ready to use him. He’s no longer _yours_ , General Organa,” she says, a knife twisting.
> 
> Finn stands, his heart thumping, flipping furiously through his options. Cling’s accusation is built on a lie, but to bring that to light would be to admit that he was never a Resistance agent, that he was a Stormtrooper from the very beginning. It’s a risk; everything is a risk, and Finn opens his mouth, but then General Organa is up, too, and pressing him forward and out of the room.
> 
> “You can’t hide from the First Order,” Cling says as they leave, and it’s not a shout, just a despairing, echoing reminder.

 

****

 

General Organa and Finn leave the insulated room and find that the other side of the glass is mid-commotion. Finn can hear snatches of raised, overlapping voices — arguments about jurisdiction, containment, trial and conviction — but Poe is at his elbow, a makeshift wall of Resistance members cordoning off a path for the general and Finn to slip through. He recognizes some of them, Dendra’s foliage rustling, kind enough to make Finn snap back to the situation at hand.

“Where are we going?” Finn asks.

“General?” Poe asks, his clip steady. “Where are we going, ma’am?”

She sighs. “The hangar, quickly.”

Finn’s learned not to question orders when you’re under siege; he matches their pace, a fast walk picking up into a marching jog.

They burst into the hangar, Poe calling out for the bay to open, heading toward a transport where Finn can see BB-8, already prepping their launch, a lone human woman at the ramp.

He assumes she’s a mech, but they get closer, and General Organa comes to a stop, and when Finn looks at the woman again, he recognizes Senator Soruna.

The senator is looking past him, straight at General Organa, and when she speaks, she says, “Are you sure, Leia? Is this the right path?”

“Yes,” the general says. “I’m sure.”

Senator Soruna laughs a little. “You’re too quick to answer,” she says. “That’s always been the problem. Your lack of doubt makes you hard to believe.”

“Are we going to have a problem here?” Poe asks. His hand is at his side, hovering over a blaster, and it’s a shock to Finn’s system how quickly things are escalating.

“Please,” Finn says. He steps forward, in front of Poe. “Senator, I’m not who you think I am, that much is true. I was raised in the First Order. I was a Stormtrooper, but I’m not one anymore. The one thing I know is that I’m never going back. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Senator Soruna absorbs his words, but remains in front of the ramp, blocking their way. Finn can feel Poe behind him, all anxious energy, the pilot feeling the pressure of a ticking clock and of the rest of the Republic contingent on base. If the opposing senators are smart, they will already be on comms with the Republic Navy, soldiers and ships being prepared to descend upon a Resistance that is harboring people who may pose a danger to their crippled government.

Finn won’t let Poe shoot a senator. It’s his main objective. He’s ready to turn, to sprint back to the interrogation room and turn himself in when Senator Soruna sighs, steps to the side of the ramp, clearing their path onto the transport.

“Thank you,” Finn says, full of relief, and she looks at him carefully, nods.

Poe files past her quickly, heading straight for the cockpit, but Finn is at General Organa’s side when the senator catches the general’s forearm. “You don’t have to run,” she says to General Organa. “But you don’t trust that, do you?”

“You forget how petty I can be, Sosha,” General Organa says, smiling. “I’m not so generous as to forget that the Senate withdrew its trust from me first. Some people make the mistake of thinking of me as Luke’s sister and expecting a kind of goodness.” She touches the senator’s face. “I thought we knew each other better than that.”

Senator Soruna lets go of the general’s sleeve, uncurling her fingers. “Be safe, Leia,” she says. “Go.” It’s too rare for Finn not to identify it, a gesture of faith.

 

****

 

They drop the general off at a nearby moon. “It’s better if we’re on different ships,” she says. “In case of pursuit. And anyway, I’ll be heading back to D’Qar sooner rather than later.”

“Pursuit?” Finn asks. “Force. This is a really fucking terrible day.”

“Don’t worry,” Poe says, clapping him on the back. “The good news is that there’s a 100% chance that any evasive maneuvers will include a couple barrel rolls.”

 

****

 

It’s only when they’re easing their way out of the Ileenium system and into a hyperspace route that Poe relaxes, his hands loosening on the controls of the transport. Finn leans back in the co-pilot’s seat, being careful not to brush against any important switches.

“So where are we going?” he asks.

“The Yavin system,” Poe says.

“What’s it like?” It’s good to focus on what’s coming next. Easier, honestly, than having to think about how his life has taken on a pattern, lately: a series of hasty escapes from every planet he’s stepped foot on.

“You’ll be safe there, Finn.” Poe checks on a couple of lights that come up on the dashboard. “It’s home.”

Home. There’s a softness that Poe fills the word with, and Finn thinks back to cool rains, to bowls of Wroshyr nut milk, to waking up in a place that was beginning to feel safe. “Do you think I’ll get to go back?” he asks. “To D’Qar?”

Poe looks over at him then. “Maybe,” he says.

“I don’t think I realized,” Finn says. “The First Order made it sound like the Republic was fully behind the Resistance. Hux used to go on and on about the Republic’s support of a paramilitary group as evidence of their corruption. But the Senate really doesn’t trust General Organa, does it? Even now.”

Poe is quiet for a while, but then he sighs heavily, turns to Finn. “There’s history there,” he says. “But not much understanding. When we were watching you interview the defector, Senator Erudo accused the general of being too kind to ‘weapons of the First Order’. Said she was blind to the pain of the Hosnian system.” Poe laughs. “As if the general hadn’t lost her own home planet, decades ago. Like she’d never worn the title ‘princess’.”

“I’d forgotten about Alderaan,” Finn says, honest.

Poe shrugs. “A lot of people have. It’s funny how fast that happens.”

Finn looks out—hyperspace isn’t unfamiliar, exactly, but there are times, still, when it feels amazing to Finn, as magic as the Jedi, as mysterious as the Force. He remembers learning about it early on during training, watching a holovid of what looked like millions of stars streaking by, smeared into long, glowing trails.

He remembers reaching out, thinking it would feel like a rush of water through his fingers, wondering what this dimension would look like if they could enter it at a speed less than light.

He remembers awe, and turning to FN-2003, and seeing the other boy’s face, caught up in the same spell.

“I wonder what her best memories are,” he says, hushed.


	3. Chapter 3

Finn is good at being realistic. It’s a part of being strategic-minded: plans keep ambition in check, hopes from growing over-run.

Poe is in and out of Yavin 4; he has a command back at D'Qar, and enough of a legacy that counts with the Republic that General Organa is able to negotiate them down to a series of paneled hearings for his role in the escape of a person-of-interest.

"That's you," he clarifies for Finn.

"Oh, thanks," Finn says. "I was racking my brain."

Yavin 4 is the first planet Finn has been on that feels like it welcomes human habitation, and he spends more time than he's proud of lying on his back on the grass outside of Poe's childhood home, staring up into a cloudless sky, watching huge flocks of whisper birds wheel and ripple, ignoring the dull throb down his spine.

He catches himself thinking of Rey a lot lately. There are things on Yavin 4 that he thinks she would like.

Anyway, Poe's gotten used to finding Finn out here. He stands next to him, his shadow falling over Finn, and nudges him with his foot, says, "You like it here? It’s nice to be on a planet where rain isn’t falling in a constant loop, right?"

Finn smiles. “I don’t know. I kind of miss the rain."

Poe follows Finn's gaze, squints up at the murmuration of birds. "We used to do tailing exercises like this. A follow-the-leader type of thing, four of us sticking to an instructor."

Finn puts an arm behind his head, shifts to look up at Poe, seeing mostly jaw and chin. "I bet you excelled," he says, smirking. It's a common theme of Poe's stories.

Poe grins, still staring up into the sky. "It depends on who you ask. It used to piss off one of our inspectors that I could always anticipate his maneuvers. Gave me hell about it once. I said, 'You want me to fly worse to make you feel better? You’re really that threatened? '"

"What'd he say?"

"He said yes." Poe laughs.

"Did you do it?"

"Yeah. Why not, you know? No skin off my nose to cut him a break." Poe smiles down at him. "Besides, I'm a real sweetheart once people have acknowledged my unparalleled skills."

Poe looks pleased when Finn breaks into a laugh. He takes a seat near Finn, frowning a little as his joints pop, scoots back under the shadow of the tree that towers by the house.

"Finn," Poe says. "Are you ever going to ask me how these hearings are going?"

"Not yet," Finn says.

 

****

 

Yavin 4 is full of history, which Finn finds fascinating. He hadn’t realized what it meant to Poe, fully, when Poe said this was home, only starting to revise his understanding when Kes Dameron met them at the spaceport.

Finn had hung back, watching Poe greet his father. They’d hugged for a long while, then slipped immediately into a dialect Finn didn't recognize. It was hard not to stare, not to document all the ways they looked alike: the same laugh lines, the same habit of ducking a little to catch a person's eyes, the same press to their lips when listening intently.

They’re not incredibly distinct behaviors, nothing that Finn had taken note of before on base when they were free of context, but seeing Poe next to his dad, those same behaviors are so clearly inherited.

 _Rey, look_ , he'd thought, an unfurling in his chest, wanting to show her something beautiful.

 

****

 

Finn still gets up at 0600 hours every morning: a lifetime of habit hard to kick. For the past week or so, his days have begun with the usual snap awake, then continued on autopilot into routine ablutions until Finn is fully dressed and ready to go in five minutes flat only to remember he doesn’t have much to do.

Typically, his M.O. would be to find work — hanging around idle still seems like it’s asking for trouble — but it doesn’t feel right, exactly, to consider changing anything in Poe’s childhood home, even to clean or repair. So many small things have stories behind them (a too-small pair of aviator goggles, a collection of dry, faded blooms), and there’s more than a small chance that he won’t recognize the significance of something beloved.

What he ends up doing is padding down from his room on the top floor and sitting at the kitchen table, cracking his knuckles, trying to soothe the anxious burr under his skin until a Dameron wakes up.

Poe’s been gone for the last week, and one Taungsday, Finn reaches the bottom of the stairs only to hear someone moving in the kitchen. It has to be Kes, and Finn slows his pace, immediately regretting that he hasn’t been quieter when he gets up. It would have been fine if he just went white-knuckled in the room he’s sleeping in.

“Finn, is that you? Come in. Take a seat.”

Kes is at the stove, and Finn obeys, taking the chair he usually occupies. Kes sets a plate down in front of him, filling the air with the smell of something spiced and honeyed. “This looks great,” Finn says.

Kes smiles, pats Finn’s shoulder in thanks. He says, quiet, “You know, when Shara and I first settled here, Poe only knew us as parents who’d dropped in between battles. It’s not easy trying to win over a five-year-old, but it was a good mission, and that helped, to have a focus. Kept me from jumping out of my skin.” Kes takes a seat next to Finn. He picks up his utensils, gestures at the food in front of them. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to make this. You’re getting up so early, you might as well be making us breakfast.”

Finn nods. He tucks in, the food so hot it burns his mouth, but it’s thick and comforting on his tongue, and there’s so much of it, and it’s delicious: sweet, and savory and full of grace.

 

****

 

He knows that, the next time they meet, Rey will have a lot to tell him. He can already imagine it, that flood of stories: about the mythic Luke Skywalker, about training to be a Jedi. He wants to know if Chewbacca and R2-D2 stayed with her, what it was like to co-pilot the Millenium Falcon with the Wookiee. Did they stay in that long-lost star system that the last Jedi had hidden himself away in, or did they set new courses? Was Skywalker kind? She deserves for him to be kind.

He doesn’t know too much about the Jedi; their primary T.O. had glossed over the order, smiling with teeth bared when she’d said that it was obsolete information now that the Jedi had been so thoroughly quashed. “The lesson to take away,” she’d purred, “is that persistent weeds may require more than one uprooting.”

There were rumors though, that the Jedi could see into minds. He wonders if Rey will be able to do that. There are things he wants to share with her, too.

 

****

 

Poe was scheduled to return early in the morning, and the night before, Kes had tossed Finn the starter to one of the speeder bikes in the garage, asked, “Can you get him?”

“But then who’ll make you a hearty and delicious breakfast?”

Kes had grimaced. “Trust me, patajo, no one’s been making a delicious breakfast in this house since you started cooking.”

It’s been a while since the sim where he'd learned to ride a speeder bike; Finn circles one of the speeders for a bit before getting on, making sure that it’s put together the way he remembers. Judging by the dust it’s gathered, Finn figures this used to be Poe’s, and so he checks for mods, too, smiles when he spots the extra fuel injectors.

By the time he mounts the bike and sets out, the morning is gray, the air cold enough to sting at his cheeks, but thin and clear. He goes easy for a bit, getting comfortable with the weight of the speeder, its controls.

The sun has yet to peek out, but Finn can see it coming, this spill of orange and pink along the horizon like a forecast.

There’s no one else on the path, empty space as far as Finn can see, and he looks around, checking over both shoulders before gunning it, flying ahead, testing the speeder’s capabilities; his faith rewarded when it climbs and climbs, the wind making his eyes water and his grin spread, catching at his voice when he whoops.

He gets to the spaceport faster than expected, but it’s a good ways out from the actual colony, and so Finn doesn’t work the brake too hard, lets the speeder spin to a stop, a neat half-turn to park, and leaps off the seat. He likes to think it’d be hot if you touched it, can imagine the air shimmering over its engines.

Poe’s leaning against the transport he flew in, his arms crossed, more luggage with him than Finn’s used to. “Nice moves, hot shot,” he says, BB-8 trilling at his feet.

Finn eyes Poe’s bags. “You should have told me you were bringing all your hair care products this time. The speeder’s not really built to haul.” He grins as the droid beeps, catching enough binary to know it’s piling on — something about a five potion regimen.

“Very funny, the both of you,” Poe says, and he pushes off the ship, pulls Finn into a hug. “How’ve you been?” he asks.

Finn holds Poe tight, trying to figure out what smells so familiar about him. “It’s been a really good morning,” he says.

 

****

 

Kes isn’t around when Finn and Poe get back to the house; there’s a troop of kids he teaches survival skills to a couple times a month. They’ve got makeshift uniforms and everything.

Finn sits on the ground in Poe’s room, back against the bed, taking up space as Poe unpacks. Poe rolls his eyes, grumbling good-naturedly as he picks his way around Finn’s outstretched legs. “This is real helpful, pal,” he says.

Finn just shrugs, hums under his breath. When Poe’s finally emptied the last of his packs, Finn asks, “Did they ground you?”

Poe raises an eyebrow. “What makes you ask that?”

Finn tips his head toward Poe’s luggage. “You’re not exactly traveling light.”

Poe shakes his head, sits on the bed, his thigh next to Finn’s head. “No, I wasn’t grounded. I ask for some time off every year around now. If we’re not in the middle of blowing up a planetkiller, I usually get it.”

“Yeah?” Finn lets his head fall back on the bed.

“Yeah. I—” Poe lets out a long, slow breath. “I like to be home for these weeks. Feels right.”

There’s something tender in Poe’s voice, and Finn closes his eyes, trying to isolate it.

“Anyway,” Poe says. He clears his throat. “Kriff, your first thought was that I’ve been grounded? Is it really that hard to believe I’d take a vacation?”

Finn lets a smile spread on his face. “You are committed to the Resistance,” he intones.

 

****

 

Poe’s brought some stuff back for Finn. Some meds accompanied by new instructions from Dr. Kalonia, a chip with a handful of messages from folks back on D’Qar

(“Who is this for?” one of the pilots asks as the viewfinder swings past him in the familiar hangar. “Why are you making us do this?”

“Snoke’s nose, Snap,” another pilot—Pava, Finn thinks—says. “Are you a complete idiot?”)

“Nothing from Rey,” Poe says, anticipating Finn’s question.

Finn nods. It’s the answer he expected, but he’s still disappointed. “You think she’s okay?”

“Yeah, buddy, I do,” Poe says, his hand on Finn’s shoulder.

Finn clears his throat, finds a smile, some comfort in Poe’s confidence.

“Now, where’d BB-8 get off to?” Poe says, doing a quick scan of the room.

“He’s probably snooping,” Finn says. The droid likes to frame its nosiness as programming, but Finn has never seen another BB-unit rifling through un-watched datapads.

“Oh yeah? What,” Poe says, “you got something to hide?”

 

****

 

Poe is on Yavin for a couple weeks, maybe more. He’s surprisingly vague about his timeline; Finn had grown accustomed to Poe’s exactness. Poe does a good job of performing ease, of pretending like his grace in the air is a combination of luck, bravado, and a devil-may-care disregard for his own life, but Finn has seen his datapad, the complex notations on his X-wing. Poe knows his ship down to the bolts, the exact velocity at which it starts to lose structural integrity, its fuel capacity to the decimal.

Poe takes so much care, and hides it so well. Finn's felt a kinship from the beginning.

Finn realizes that he should have wondered, maybe, what Poe would be like at home. There’s a genuine relaxation to Poe’s body language, a gentling in his shoulders. On Yavin 4, his pace slows, and Finn realizes that Poe had been power-walking everywhere on base.

“You keep staring,” Poe says at dinner one night. “You okay?”

“Oh." Finn flushes, averts his gaze. "Sorry.”

“If Finn wants to stare, let him stare,” Kes says, dumping another scoop of rice onto Poe’s plate. “What, you’re shy all of a sudden?”

“He’s not getting a look at my best side,” Poe protests. He touches at his nose suddenly, eyes widening. “Oh, kriff. Are you just now noticing my schnoz? There’s a reason I don’t like to be photographed in profile.”

Finn shrugs. “I clocked that nose months ago.” He laughs as Poe kicks him under the table, then explains, “Seriously, sorry. I kind of forget, sometimes, that people can tell when I’m staring now. Used to be able to hide that under a helmet.”

It was meant to make him laugh, but Poe’s eyes dim immediately, and for a moment, Finn feels the long stretch of his history crowd into the room, nothing but shadow when compressed like that, and Finn feels rocked, suddenly foreign.

“Hey, don’t let Poe get you down,” Kes says, thumping Finn’s shoulder. “Your piercing gaze is making him nervous. He’s used to people seeing him through a soft focus lens, like the star of some holonovela. We can get you a pair of tinted goggles if he really can’t stand it.”

Kes’ smile is warm, and bright, and so steady, and Poe responds immediately. “I could talk about you like you weren’t here, too,” he says. “But I won’t because I’m polite.”

Kes shrugs, spooning food into his mouth. “You didn’t get that from me.” His hand is still on Finn, anchoring him, and this is foreign, too, in a way.

 

****

 

Finn wakes up to a knock on his bedroom door, and it jars him, the change in his morning routine. He jumps out of bed, fully awake, makes sure to pull the door open before another knock has to sound.

“Sorry to wake you,” Poe says. He rubs at the back of his head, and Finn looks him over. Poe is fully kitted out, like he’s ready to go on an excursion. “Do you, uh…” Poe shifts from foot to foot. “This might be stupid, but I do this thing every year, and…” He trails off.

It’s the antsiest he’s ever seen Poe. “Where’re we heading?” Finn asks, simple.

 

****

 

Poe had been quiet as he’d waited for Finn to get ready, stayed that way on the walk out to the shed that houses the speeders. He’s in his head, Finn can see, and Finn lets him be, waits for him to make his way out, break for air.

As they'd been leaving, they’d found a pack on the porch that someone had crammed full of food, and Poe had shaken his head fondly, shot a glance up at his dad’s bedroom window.

They take two speeders in the opposite direction of town. There’s a fog that clings close to the ground, tatters of cloud that cloak Poe for seconds at a time. It’s a nice, easy ride for a while, and Finn licks dew off his lips, feels mist condense on his skin.

They’re side by side, and then Poe whistles sharply, and when Finn glances over, Poe is looking at him, this smirk on his face that Finn recognizes as competitive.

Finn leans forward in his seat, revs the engine of his speeder.

Poe raises an eyebrow, and Finn shrugs, offering to indulge Poe’s challenge if the pilot really wants to take him on. He plays it cool, knowing exactly which buttons to press for this, at least.

Poe smiles wide. “On three?”

Finn grins. “Sure.”

“Three,” Poe says. Finn braces himself, studies the road ahead, anticipating any turns.

“Two,” and Finn notices the sun breaking over the horizon, can feel the need for a squint, lowers the tinted visor on his helmet.

“One,” and it’s a shot, the world disappearing into things Finn can’t hold: speed and wind and the sound of Poe’s laugh.

 

****

 

They park the speeders at the base of a slope. “Nobody’s going to take these?” Finn asks.

“It’s still too small a colony for anyone to get away with stealing speeders,” Poe says.

The flora is different from D’Qar's but just as lush, and Finn finds himself remembering red moss like an arterial system, remembers wondering what would happen if he took a knife to it, if it would spill blood, clean and easy, like he’d practiced dozens of times.

The trees don’t climb as high here, though. They’re thick but grow only a couple feet taller than Poe, and Finn watches as Poe reaches up, pulls easily at a piece of fruit hanging on a canopy branch, bites into it.

“Is it good?” Finn asks.

Poe wipes his mouth on his arm, holds out the bitten fruit.

Finn takes it, turns it over in his hands a couple times, then crunches into it, the slight sweetness giving way to something more bitter.

He grimaces, and Poe laughs, “It’s kind of an acquired taste.”

Finn’s skeptical, but he takes another bite, then another. It doesn’t grow on him, but it’s not the worst thing he’s ever had to eat, and it doesn’t feel right to throw it away half-consumed, his hesitancy half-rooted in an ingrained appreciation of resource maximization, and half in a naturally occurring value assigned to the things Poe gives him.

“So I was talking to my dad yesterday,” Poe says.

“Oh yeah?” Finn wipes fruit juice off his hands onto his pants. “He tell you that he’s already armed me with a half-dozen stories of your pot-stirring teenage self?”

Poe laughs. “I was a good kid.”

Finn scoffs. “Show me your sources.”

“You haven’t heard about all the opportunities for trouble I turned _down_.”

"That’s your defense? That you could have been worse?”

Poe shakes his head. “You’d be surprised at how well it works. It’s my defense for these kriffing hearings with the Republic.”

Finn tries not to flinch, looks down at his feet, maintains a steady pace forward.

He hears Poe sigh, his footsteps slowing as he matches Finn’s gait. Poe clears his throat. “I know you don’t like to hear about the hearings.”

“It’s frustrating,” Finn admits. “I can’t do anything but sit on my hands while you and General Organa are taking hits trying to shield me. I hate that.”

“We want to protect you,” Poe says quietly.

Finn nods. “I know. I know you do.” He hefts his pack higher onto his shoulders, feeling the heavy weight of it. “That’s… it’s just an adjustment.”

“Why don’t—” Poe hesitates. “Why don’t you ask about Cling?”

Finn can’t help jerking his head up at that, meeting Poe’s eyes. Truth be told, he’d assumed she’d been decommissioned, executed immediately with no one in her corner, and he just barely holds onto the desire to request confirmation, swallows a surprised, ‘She’s alive?’. He asks instead, “How is she?”

“I can't figure it out, exactly. She was stone-lipped for a while. She refused to give up her helmet, went rathtar-wild when the Republic guards tried to take it from her. But then a couple weeks later, she took her meal tray and smashed at the helmet until it cracked.”

Finn smirks at that. “Everyone’s got a little bit of a love/hate thing going on with the armor.”

Poe snorts, then says, “She talks about you.”

“I’m sure she says lovely things,” Finn says dryly.

Poe shrugs. “Most of the time she seems more confused than angry. ‘How could he turn traitor to the First Order?’ ‘Didn’t he expect the retribution of the Supreme Leader?’ ‘Why did he weep over a corps he abandoned?’”

Finn’s eyes go hot, a pricking behind them. “I guess it doesn’t make sense, does it?” he says, trying to laugh.

Poe hums a little at the back of his throat. “You know what my dad said yesterday? He said grief is complicated. He said that people can’t control what they feel a sense of loss about.” Poe’s voice grows stronger. “He said it must be hard, to hear people mourn the death of six planets and celebrate one, and to feel like your grief is wrong.”

Finn stares straight ahead, the rising sun a tearing heat at the cloud cover. “They weren’t good people,” he says. He's not sure what Poe wants to hear.

“No, maybe not,” Poe says. “But you could tell me what they were, besides good.”

 

****

 

They hike through most of the afternoon, the yellow sun high in the air. They take turns carrying the pack, and Finn makes sure that they break to hydrate regularly.

The last hour or so, though, Poe’s been walking with renewed purpose, the only sounds their shared, steady breathing, the sweet, occasional whistle of birds.

There’s a break ahead, a rocky outcropping that juts from the side of the mountain top they’ve arrived at, and just at the edge, on rock that Finn wouldn’t expect to support life, a lone tree.

“Are we here?” Finn asks.

“We’re here.” Poe says. There’s a rain collector just to the side of the tree, and Poe goes over, grabs the bucket hanging to the side of it, and waters the tree, the air filling with the smell of wet dirt. Its roots are mostly exposed, wrapping around the outcropping, tendrils disappearing over the edge, and at the touch of water, they seem, almost, to shimmer, leaves fluttering as if stirred by a breeze.

Finn approaches the tree. It stands just a little taller than him, and it glows in the warm, high noon sun. “This looks like the tree near your home.”

Poe nods. “My dad and I planted a clipping here.” He smiles, his eyes shining as he steps back, hands on hips, staring at the tree. “He wasn’t sure it would take, but it looks good.” He reaches forward to touch a leaf, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.

“It looks great,” Finn says. “Tall enough to offer some shade at least.”

“You think?” Poe narrows his eyes, measuring, then drops the pack onto the ground, hunches over to settle against the thick trunk. His legs extend past the shade, into the sun, but there’s room, and Poe pats the earth next to him.

Finn sits, too, ignoring the fresh wetness of the dirt. He looks up into the tree’s canopy, the filtered light, the surprising coolness under the tree’s shadow. “I’ve never seen a tree like this before,” he says.

“It’s rare,” Poe says. “My mother went on a mission with Luke Skywalker to rescue the last two living branches of a tree that used to grow in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Or so the story goes.”

“So… what, is it Force-sensitive?”

Poe shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. It grows places where it shouldn’t. It seems to listen when people talk. I used to be afraid of it, honestly.”

Finn looks at Poe now, studying the profile of his face. “Why?”

Poe smiles. “I was scared of a lot of things as a kid, but especially the Force. You know: they told you that if you were Force-sensitive, you had all this power you had to be responsible for, and that the Jedi would come to take you away from your family, and you could never be married or fall in love. I was afraid that if I was too near the tree at our house, it would infect me. One summer, I spent a couple weeks trying to build a fence around it with my blocks.”

Finn laughs. “You don’t seem frightened anymore.”

Poe nods. “My mom loved this tree. I’d find her with her datapad under it all the time, and I’d throw a fit until she’d come out from under it. And then one day, I was screaming my head off, and she said, ‘Wouldn’t you rather come sit next to me here than cry over there?’” He laughs. “And that did sound better, so I did.”

“Were you still afraid?” Finn asks.

“Yeah, the first few times. It’s hard to let go of a childhood fear like that. But she’d hold my hand, and we’d sing a little, and she worked it out of me, why I was so afraid. And she said that the Force wasn’t something to fear, that it was already a part of me, something that connected me to every single living being out there. That it connected me to her, and her to me.” Poe’s voice is a little rough, a little raw. “So it didn’t seem so scary anymore.”

Poe’s hand is next to Finn’s, and Finn feels overwhelmed, suddenly, this crashing flood of emotion that makes his temples throb, the leaves of the tree pulsing in time. He takes Poe’s hand, and Poe squeezes tight, and when Finn looks again at Poe’s profile, Poe is blinking back tears.

“Sometimes, I still feel like that kid,” Poe says. “Afraid of things I don’t understand. Wanting the people I care about to stay far away from anything that might hurt them.” He lets out a ragged breath.

There’s a lot to unpack.

First:

> Poe had always gracefully evaded Finn’s past, excusing himself from Finn’s briefings. For a while, Finn had wondered, silently, if it was to maintain a distance Poe required to be able to carry out his missions.
> 
> It’s a part of First Order strategy, actually, to put helmets on their soldiers, beyond the use as armor. Finn remembers a conversation he’d overheard as a trainee, once, when they were discussing a lighter armor set for Troopers, spurred by a contractor that had offered a cheaper make that didn’t include a helmet. A general had argued that their current goal was to tar the reputation of the Resistance, and that its soft-hearted leaders would be that much harder to lure into egregious action if First Order soldiers suddenly had faces.
> 
> Finn understood that. They were at war. It made sense, and he’d applied that rationale to Poe, figured that he was a commander who led many of his own into battle, and killed, and did not have the luxury to empathize with those wearing enemy colors.

Second:

> Poe is afraid of Finn’s past in a way that Finn still doesn’t fully understand. It’s strange to have someone prioritize Finn’s comfort, and from the beginning, Poe had wanted to spare him as much as he could. It’s kind — the impulse is kind, Finn knows. But it feels so foreign to him, this belief that pain is something that can be avoided.
> 
> That pain is something that should be avoided.
> 
> But Poe is also clearer-sighted than Finn had anticipated in some ways. Enough to see (helped along by Kes Dameron, it sounds like) that no, not all of Finn’s memories are bad. That, yes, there are things he mourns, people he’s sad will no longer get the chance to breathe, to seek new paths, to escape destinies.

Third:

> Poe is a man who loves to fly, loves to leave gravity behind as if it has no hold on him, who found this peak high enough where the air is thin, where a magnificent view of the rainforest of Yavin 4 stretches below their feet, where it feels, almost, like you could reach up and touch the sun… he found this place when he was still a teenager and planted a tree here, on this day, many years ago, inspired by a mother who soared.
> 
> Poe is a man who loves to fly who’s chosen to ground himself, every year, on this day.
> 
> Poe is a man who loves to fly, anchored suddenly, by his hand locked around Finn’s.

It’s strange to see Poe so vulnerable, something that plucks at Finn’s heart. He reaches up and wipes at Poe’s cheek, a wetness at his fingertips. “I had a training officer, once," Finn says. "We used to call him Hook. He had these two teeth that curled up and out of his mouth, and he’d hook a finger on one when he was thinking. He was the first one who ever told me I had potential.” Finn smiles. “He used to sneak me books. Actual bound books, paper, sometimes with these illustrations on the covers. My favorite was one that covered Force mythology. It seems obvious, that different cultures interpret the Force differently, but it was mind-blowing at the time, that things could be defined differently than what the First Order decreed.”

Poe’s thumb is rubbing, back and forth, across the back of Finn’s hand.

“We were taught that the Force is power realized. That it’s something that must be tamed, that only the strongest can channel its destructive, world-shaking tendencies. But there was a story, in my book. A story about the origin of the Force. It said that, in the beginning, for many years, life was a flame that happened to catch. And sometimes it would flicker out, and that would be that, and the universe would hold its breath and wait for another flame.”

Finn reaches up with his free hand, plucks two leaves from the tree.

“Then, one day, two lit at the same time. For a long time, they were happy. The warmed themselves in each other's light. They danced. They spoke. And they became brave enough, together, to look out at the rest of the universe around them. It wasn't dark, but there was so much of it, still unformed. Full of potential, and ringing out for help to become something more. And the flames wanted to answer, but they weren’t sure how. They knew that they flickered, sometimes, and that one day, not too long from now, they would disappear, and the universe would have to wait again."

A breeze picks up, and Finn watches the leaves flutter.

"But a voice said that it had figured out how to sustain their light. That it could create something like a tide. Something that would ebb and flow and remain, that would teem with their energy, ready to be drawn upon, to build new things, to make half-formed things whole. And so they asked, 'How?' And the voice said they would have to fall. That for them to stay, they would have to change. That they would douse their light for a moment, but create a lasting force. And they talked about it for a while. And one flame said, ‘Everything will change.’ And the other said, ‘Everything will stay.’"

Finn lets the leaves go, watches them dance, blown up and over the edge.

"And the voice said, ‘It could be both.’”

“Then what happened?” Poe asks.

Finn laughs. “I don’t know. That’s where the story ends.”

 

****

The sun doesn’t set quietly on Yavin 4. As it descends, its light fading, the gas giant this moon orbits starts to appear, casting its own swirling glow. At dusk, as they walk down the mountain, shadows catch and stretch across Poe’s face, first blue, then pink, then black.

 _We want to know each other_ , Finn thinks. _Look, Rey_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's still alive!

The truth is that Finn has always felt the temptation of a cause. 

Phasma wasn’t kind but she wasn’t cruel, either, her preferred method of correction a steadily proposed set of questions, an inexorable logic that seemed indomitable. 

“What is the goal of the First Order?”

“To bring the rule of law to lands torn apart by anarchy.”

“Why were these lands torn apart?”

“Because once there existed an empire that sought to bring peace and glory and prosperity to the galaxy. An empire that was brought low by the actions of a few dedicated to a freedom so total it was no different from chaos.”

“And why do you fight for the First Order?”

“Because our mission is just.”

“Why do you fight for the First Order, FN-2187?” Phasma would ask.

And Finn would look straight ahead, his heart beating a little faster in his chest, and say, “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

****

It’s late by the time they arrive back at Poe’s home, but the house is still alive with light. From a distance, Finn can spot a handful of moon lanterns in slow orbit around the yard, casting a pale, reflective glow, the sound of voices coming from inside the house.

As they dismount from their speeders, Poe rubs the back of his head, says, “I was supposed to give you a heads up that we’d have guests.”

Finn tenses a little. “Resistance?” he asks.

Poe laughs. “No, buddy, relax. It’s only family. Though the Beys are tough in their own way.”

Finn nods, thinking back to the visit to the tree, Poe’s stories about his mother. The loss of her. “This is a special day for you,” he says, quietly. “Is it an anniversary?”

“It’s her birthday,” Poe says, simply.

Neither of them are in a rush to clear the short distance to the house. Finn tries to summon up the endurance to meet a flood of new faces. He tamps down his anxiety as they get closer to the door, ignoring the glances Poe is stealing, but just before they’re about to walk in, Poe whistles at him to force his attention.

“Hey,” Poe says. “They’re all going to be here in the morning. Duck up the stairs. I’ll make excuses for you.”

Finn wants to say it’s fine, that he could be ready, but instead he rubs at the back of his neck, says “Are you sure?”

Poe nods. “It’s been a long day. You’ll put a better face on after a night’s rest. I get that.”

Finn can’t hide his relief, grinning. “Just don’t say it’s a digestive thing,” he jokes.

Poe smirks. “No promises.”

****

Yavin 4 isn’t drought-prone, so Finn takes an actual shower and takes his time until he hears Rey’s voice in his head. More accurately, he gets a flash of her eyebrow rising, a subtle judgment on his too-free use of water, and he sighs, presses a button to stop the flow. 

He got used to it quick: not depriving himself. There were people, back in his former life, who saw their ability to withstand cruelty as a point of pride. A passel of trainees would return from reconditioning, and Nines would detach and return to their corps, wincing a little too big. 

“How was it?” Slip would ask, and Nines wouldn’t answer at first, slowly lowering himself onto his bunk.

“Just be glad it wasn’t you,” Nines would finally say dismissively, and Finn could see it, another brick in the awesome wall that was Nines’ resilience, evidence of the pride one could take in surviving the First Order.

His thoughts must have shown on his face. “You got a problem, FN-2187?” Nines asked, sudden.

“What?” Finn shook his head. “No.”

“Spit it out,” Nines had said.

“It’s nothing.”

“Don’t give me that shit.” Nines struggled to lift his helmet off, a telltale tremble in his arms. “I can’t deal with your silent staring tonight.”

Finn had huffed, stood to help Nines with his helmet. He pulled it off, took a quick scan of Nines’ face, took note of the popped vessels in the whites of his eyes, the dark marks where fingers had pressed hot into his temples. “I just don’t understand, is all. How you act, after.”

Nines had held Finn’s gaze, searching it efficiently. “Why shouldn’t I be proud?” he asked, finally. Finn has always tended to underestimate Nines. He reminds himself, one more time, not to do it again. “What else could I be?”

“You could just be _hurt_ ,” Finn said, an ache inside his chest. He wanted to touch Nines’ cheek.

****

The Beys feel like a dream, sometimes. He must have said it out loud, because Poe laughs, throws an arm around his shoulder and says, “I think you might be drunk, buddy.”

Finn frowns. “I can’t be drunk. It’s the middle of the day.”

Kes laughs, too, and tosses over a canteen. “Make sure he drinks some water, Poe.”

They’d gone out to a lakeshore, Yavin 4’s sun high and sweet, warming the breeze that blew across the water. A passel of Beys, aunts and uncles and cousins, created a swirl of laughter, and raised voices, and encouragements to eat this, or try that, and this galaxy, too, Poe navigates with ease.

Finn thinks this might have been a kind of pilot training in of itself, as he watches Poe duck and weave, engaging with a smile as effective as any weapon.

Finn knows now, how much an expression of feeling it can be, to provide food and drink, remembering the exactness of Kes’ instruction as he taught Finn to dice and whisk and taste as he goes. He’s greedy for expressions of care, he can admit, and when people put drinks in his hand, it’s a luxury to feel like he can trust them. That this is a place where you can freely accept what’s given to you.

He traces the thoughts to their logical conclusion, feels a slog in his brain as he tries to remember just how many Beys had passed him glasses, then opens the canteen, takes a swig of water, and says, finally, “I might need to sit down.”

“The fearsome Resistance fighter admits defeat,” Poe says. He slips his arm off Finn’s shoulder, braces Finn with a hand low on his back as he sits. “You gonna be okay?”

Finn nods, wets his lower lip with his tongue. It’s hot out. “I’ll be fine.” He shakes his head. “Force, I haven’t been drunk since I was a trainee.”

Poe hums as he sits down next to Finn, stares out at the water. He’s dressed more casually than Finn’s used to, his arms exposed. He’s burning, just at the top of his shoulders. Finn reaches out to touch without thinking, catches himself at the last minute, lets his hand hover over Poe’s shoulder, feeling the radiating heat. 

“That’s going to sting later,” Finn says.

Poe looks over, frowns. “It stings now,” he says.

“Is there a medkit around?” Finn takes a quick sweep, is getting up when Poe pulls him back down again. 

“Hey, relax. I’ll take a dip. It’ll help. You want to come with?”

Finn shrugs. “My head’s already swimming.” 

Poe laughs, quiet. “Alright, hang tight then.” He stands, pulls off his shirt in one smooth motion. He takes a few steps toward the water, then turns, jogging backward, “Watch this,” he says, and Finn could swear he’s glowing, his skin sparking under this moon’s sun. 

“I’m watching,” Finn says, and he hears his tone say more than he’d intended, but Poe’s already turned around again, running, an arc headed to break a silvery surface.

****

Back on the Finalizer, they had been taught that it was the primary duty of a Stormtrooper to execute commands. Waking hours were defined by orders, and unless a trooper was expressly told to stop executing, they would go on acting on the same order until it was time to obey the standing command to sleep.

_ Start this. Stop that. Move on to this. Now hold.   _

Finn knows that, of all the places he’s been so far, life on Yavin 4 is the least like that, surrounded by stretching hours and sun and people’s memories. It’s just habit, he tells himself, that he can’t seem to stop executing commands, once given.

“Watch this,” Poe had said, and Finn finds himself tracking the pilot by rote, his eyes drawn, drawn, drawn again.

****

Poe’s family members peel off as the days pass, leaving so gradually that Finn is surprised, one morning, when he comes down for breakfast and sees only Kes.

“It’s quiet now, no?” Kes says, and he cocks his head toward the stove top, smiles as Finn joins him, already reaching for an egg to crack.

They work in silence for a little while, passing spices, moving around each other as they cook in tandem.

“You’re good at this,” Kes says finally.

Finn feels himself blush, says, “Thanks. You’re a patient teacher. I’m still a little surprised that you were able to keep some of my earlier meals down.”

Kes laughs, nudges Finn aside and toward the table. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Finn snorts. “Liar.”

Kes grins, doesn’t deny it when called out. He sets food in front of Finn’s place, and the two sit together. “You were a good student, too, you know. It takes as much patience to learn something as it does to teach it.”

Finn shrugs. “I’m good at taking direction.” 

“Yes.” Kes takes a bite of his breakfast, humming in satisfaction. “But you’ve amended my recipes. I’ve never gotten more compliments for my meals than I did this week, and you cooked more of them than I actually did.”

Finn shakes his head. “You’re giving me too much credit for adding an extra pinch of salt here or there.”

“Sometimes that’s all it takes,” Kes says. “A new perspective. A nudge. Something tells me you’ve never been passive, Finn.”

Finn laughs at that. He sighs, looks down at his plate. “I know you’re trying to give me a compliment.”

“And?” Kes asks.

Finn wants to touch Kes’ hand. He doesn’t know if that’s appropriate. “I’m still learning to accept things,” he says quietly, and Kes moves his hand over Finn’s, squeezes his fingers reassuringly.

****

Here’s a truth: Finn has known Poe is keeping something under his belt. He’s got a secret, and for a little while, after their hike up to the see Poe’s mother’s Force-sensitive tree, Finn had thought it was that: Poe’s quiet, intimate grief, the memories of his childhood self. 

But Finn hasn’t been able to stop watching, and he notices when Poe slips away, sometimes catches snatches of conversation not meant for his ears when he comes around corners. 

Finn had asked, a couple of times, for news—about the General, the Resistance… about Cling—and Poe had said, “I’ll tell you when there’s been some movement. It’s all just machinations and maneuvering right now. No action,” he’d say, grinning. 

Finn had let that lie—if he’s being completely honest, he’d been content with it. Poe wasn’t wrong when he’d said Finn didn’t like to hear about the hearings. Finn had always resented feeling helpless. 

But the Damerons’ home is quiet for the first time in a long while, and after breakfast Finn is full and sated, and nudged into boldness.

Finn checks Poe’s bedroom but his bed is empty already, and so he loops back down the stairs, heads outside to the land out back, and literally runs into Poe, already fully dressed, brow knit together.

“What’s wrong?” Finn asks.

Poe hesitates, his hand stuttering up to his forehead, trying to smooth the line forming between his eyebrows. “Hey, Finn, buddy, I don’t know that this is a good—”

Finn feels a rush of frustration, his stomach tightening. “Poe, tell me.” 

Poe shakes his head, chewing on his cheek. He runs a hand through his hair, a familiar nervous tic. “I’m not trying to be an ass, Finn, but this isn’t going to be something you can do anything about, and it’s  _ classified _ besides. As surprising as it may seem, we do have a hierarchy of information in the Resistance, and technically I kriffing outrank you.” 

It jerks Finn up short. He lets out a slow breath, counting down from ten, wishing suddenly and fiercely for the sanctuary of the Trooper’s helmet. “You’re trying to protect me. I get that. Force, Poe, do I get it. You and the general risked your careers for me. You’re risking  _ imprisonment _ if my eavesdropping is a reliable source.”

Poe’s expression is wavering. “Finn, I don’t want you to worry about this.” His eyes are serious, his hand coming to rest on Finn’s arm, his grip stronger than Finn had anticipated. “If you had to hear the way they talk about you in these kriffing hearings—this isn’t the Resistance at its best. It’s not the Republic at its best. They’re walking wounded and they don’t see  _ you _ . They only see the helmet. They only hear Cling’s accusation that you’ve been brainwashed or some other bullshit by the Force.”

“That’s not how the Force works.”

Poe laughs, short. “They don’t care about that. None of them know how the Force  _ works _ .” 

“But the Republic has worked with the Jedi for so long.” 

“Finn, come on. The Jedi are a defunct branch of the Republic’s military. Even at the peak of the power, the Senate never bothered to understand their ability. They were just a weapon they hoped to point.” 

Finn can feel a dull throbbing behind his eyes. He’s not sure how they ended up here, having this conversation. He’s not sure why it feels so hard to take a full breath. “Poe.” He concentrates. “Poe, you’re going somewhere. Something happened. And you should tell me what it is.”

“Finn—”

Finn grips both of Poe’s shoulders. “Hey, listen to me for a second. You’re—” He licks his lips, searching for the words. “You’re so kind. You _are_. You’re good, and strong, and passionate about your cause. But you think I’m naive or  _ soft _ or something. You think I need you to protect me because I seem so new to your world. But I’ve been alive for a long time. Before I knew you, I had a life where softness wasn't a luxury anyone I knew could afford. And in another, not very different world, I lead the FN Corps. I’m being groomed to take Phasma’s role one day.” He sighs, heavy and pleading. “Do you hear me?”

Poe looks… Finn’s not sure. Angry? Tired? ...Hurt, maybe, and that consideration makes Finn wince. “I hear you,” Poe says, and his voice is small.

Finn presses his lips together, searches Poe’s eyes, then drops his chin to his chest. “Please don’t be—” He cuts himself off. He’s still holding onto Poe’s shoulders, he thinks dimly, and before he can stop himself he says, “Man, I hope I’m allowed to talk to you like this.” 

Poe makes a sound from his chest. He puts his hands under Finn’s arms, pulls him closer. His head drops forward, and suddenly they’re forehead to forehead, sharing space, sharing air. “You are,” Poe says, and it’s revelatory in a way, Finn thinks. Just how much your story can change. Two words can change your life, show you just how safe you weren't  for so long, how far you’ve come. 

****

Poe fills Finn in while they’re packing. The Republic has been busy. While investigating the story the Resistance had crafted around Finn, and forcing General Organa and Poe through contentious hearing after contentious hearing, they’d also been preparing to put Cling on trial, a show of justice for the planets thrown into chaos by the perceived weakness of the Republic and its inability to strike back at the First Order. 

“She was supposed to be arraigned on D’Qar in a couple of weeks,” Poe explains. “Senator Soruna would sit on the council-in-term. We thought we had an agreement.”

“But?” Finn prods, throwing clothes together.

“Erudo must have called in all of his chips. They moved her off-planet in the dead of night, called an emergency council for her arraignment within a few hours.” Poe pulls a zipper closed with extra force. He’s chewing on his cheek again.

Finn stands, puts his bag over his shoulder. He’s ready to move. “They’ve decided to execute her,” he says. 

Poe meets Finn’s eyes, then nods.

“It’s time to go,” Finn says. There might be some sort of meaning in it, Finn thinks. That so much of his life lately has been returning to places he’s been happy to leave.

****

He had told Poe that the Force couldn't be used to brainwash people because in that instant he had thought of the training they had been given as Troopers. Stories about Luke Skywalker and the Old Dead Master Kenobi, and how they could redirect your focus with a wave of their hand.

“It’s a trick,” Hook had explained. “A suggestion, not an inception. They can’t think for you. They can only nudge.” 

Finn understands the calculation that can lead to withholding certain data, spreading certain misinformation. 

When he looks back on his time in the First Order with more distance, he remembers again how it could feel, during reconditioning. A pleasant heat, warm enough to keep close, until, before you could even notice, your thoughts were melting at the edges. It’s hard to remember the details of the process. It had always been hard; cadets returning to their barracks remembering the shape of pain but not how it was dealt. 

Finn had met Kylo Ren once. Well, “met” might be too strong a word—he had stood guard during an interrogation Kylo was conducting, assisting Captain Phasma and holding his blaster close to his chest, trying to look straight ahead and keep from flinching with every scream from the Vahla male Kylo was speaking with.

When sanitation came to drag the body out, Finn knew he was supposed to follow, but the structure they had pulled the Vahla from caught his eye, something familiar. He knew how those prongs would grip a head. Could almost feel them, a ring of metal teeth, and he squinted, almost took a step forward—

“Is there a problem, FN-2187?” Kylo Ren had asked, smoothly.

“He’s fine.” Captain Phasma had appeared at Finn’s elbow, apparently doubling back from supervising the exit of the subject of Kylo Ren’s interrogation. “Did you receive the intelligence you were looking for?” she had asked Kylo.

Finn knew that everyone in that room knew the interrogation had been a failure, and he held his breath, trying not to look from mask to mask, wishing he could see any indication: the warning of a snarl.

Kylo Ren had only raised a hand, closed it into a fist, metal suddenly crunching as the prisoner subjugator behind them crumpled.

Phasma hadn't reacted. She stood tall as she watched him go, then said, “Don’t be deceived by his stillness. He tries to tame an uncontrollable thing.” 

  
Finn looks at the halo swinging, remembers the sentient being in its grip, the Vahla’s defiant jaw. “Yes,” he says.


End file.
